Theater Department Masters Theses Collection

Dramaturg as Artistic Instigator

McClain, Megan J. — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:21:14 PDT

Dramaturgs have been struggling to define themselves and assert their raison d'être in the American theatre for the past four decades. In an evolving theatrical landscape that includes expanding new play development processes and new modes of collaborative interdisciplinary theatre-making, the role of the dramaturg must be reexamined in order for it to stake a new artistic claim in the field. Devised theatre-making processes rely on dramaturgical practice as an integral part of generating, editing, and structuring performance material and offer a fertile artistic avenue for dramaturgs to utilize their skills. To explore the role of the dramaturg in devised theatre, I chose to curate a festival of three new devised works entitled Beyond the Horizon. This thesis describes in detail my role as curator in the planning, creation, and execution of the festival, as well as my role as a dramaturg within the devising process of one of the three works. To encompass both the idea of the dramaturg as an active co-creator of performance and an empowered facilitator of change, I proposed a new title for the role: artistic instigator. Drawn from my conclusions and discoveries while working on the Beyond the Horizon festival, I have formed a description about how the dramaturg-as-artistic-instigator might function within devising ensembles, propose changes to current new play development practices, and advocate for expanded methods of play-making.

Costume Design for The Winter's Tale by William Shakespeare

White, Erin A. — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 06:19:38 PDT

This paper discusses a theoretical costume design for The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare. The costume designer chose to set the production in an imaginary, fanciful place, with Gothic fashion, art nouveau, and fairy tale illustrations as influences. The paper includes character analysis, research, and a discussion of the design process.

"Speak to me in vernacular, doctor": Translating and Adapting Tirso de Molina's El Amor Médico for the Stage

Brew, Sarah A. — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:39:49 PDT

Considered one of the greatest playwrights of the Spanish Golden Age, Tirso de Molina (1580?-1648) lived something of a double life, alternating—much like the characters in his plays—between two separate and often conflicting lives. Though Tirso, whose real name was Gabriel Téllez, spent the greater portion of his life in the church as a Mercedarian friar, his dramatic output as a playwright was prodigious in scope. Fewer than 90 of his plays survive today, and only a handful have been translated into English. This M.F.A. thesis therefore presents the first-ever English-language translation and adaptation of one of Tirso’s plays, El amor médico, translated as Love the Doctor. The translation/adaptation is preceded by an introduction, as well as by chapters contextualizing the play in the writing of Tirso, the comedia, and the world of seventeenth-century medicine and cross-dressing. The thesis concludes by examining both the translational strategies and artistic choices made at various stages in the process of translating and adapting Tirso’s circa 1621 comedia

A Design Concept For The Lighting Of HELL IN HIGH WATER By Marcus Gardley

Greenberg, Jessica M. — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 05:25:52 PDT

A DESIGN CONCEPT FOR THE LIGHTING OF

HELL IN HIGH WATER BY MARCUS GARDLEY

MAY 2012

JESSICA GREENBERG, B.A., HAMPSHIRE COLLEGE

M.F.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Penny Remsen

I designed the lighting for this new play with music HELL IN HIGH WATER by Marcus Gardley, produced by the UMass Amherst Theater Department. In this thesis paper I discuss the creative process from start to finish. I include relevant lighting paperwork and images from the production.

“What Country Friends Is This?”: Creating Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night Onstage, A Director's Journey

Williams, Dawn Monique — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 09:42:23 PST

This written portion of my thesis is aimed at documenting how I, the director, as both interpretive and generative artist, took William Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night from the page to the stage through ongoing collaboration with a team of artists including designers, a composer, and actors. My documentation includes the generation of my theatrical production concept and staging of Shakespeare’s play. In order to place my production of Twelfth Night in cultural, historical, and artistic contexts, I open my discussion to theoretical considerations and artistic practices, address my specific artistic decisions in the creation of this production, examine the particular problems encountered in the making of this work, and reconstruct the creative process itself.

A Design Concept for the Lighting Design of Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba

Kramer, Thaddeus L. — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:59:28 PDT

A discussion of the abstract approach for the lighting design of the Theater Department’s Fall 2010 production of Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba through the use of time of day and “clean and dirty” light.

The Twenty-Fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee: A Lighting Artist's Approach

Hicks, Jonathan D. — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:57:53 PDT

A reflection of the lighting artist’s approach for the lighting design of The Twenty-fifth Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. University of Massachusetts, Amherst Department of Theater’s Fall 2010 production used as a research ground for the experimentation of lighting design through the cueing process.

Dramaturging Contemporary Feminism(s): A Festival of New American Plays by Women

Denison, Emily E. — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:52:51 PDT

In the wake of Emily Glassberg Sands' well-publicized thesis, Opening the Curtain on Playwright Gender, theater artists across the country are up in arms about the disparity that has long existed between male and female playwrights. Glassberg Sands’ audit study showed that literary managers and artistic directors rate female-authored scripts lower in terms of quality, marketability, and audience response. In addition, recent studies show that only 20% of the plays produced in American regional theaters each year have female playwrights. As a positive step towards equality, I curated and produced a festival of new American plays by women entitled Voices in Contemporary Feminism(s). It was my goal to instigate change first by staging new American plays by women and then by engaging artists and audience members alike in conversation about feminism(s) and feminist themes, female playwrights, the current position of women in American theater, and how we can change the status quo. This thesis describes in detail the impetus behind creating the festival, the planning process, and the events of the festival itself, and then draws conclusions about the role dramaturgs can play in combating gender inequity.

A Process of Design: The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Berfield, Dennis R. Mr. — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:49:23 PDT

A collaborative process, when implemented for a theatrical production, not only reinforces a design team's ability to tell a story, it supports a artistically unified design that can be communicated easily to all members of a production team regardless of their production role. The information within this thesis is documentation of a collaborative process between the Scenic Designer and the production team for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater's production of The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee by Rachel Sheinkin with music and lyrics by William Finn. Preliminary design images, model photographs, Autodesk AutoCAD design plates, and Google Sketchup renderings all serve as steps to communicate scenic design ideas to this collaborative process. The musical was performed on the Rand stage in the Fine Arts Center in December of 2010.

Freedom in Structure: Life Inside The House of Bernarda Alba

Bercovici, Toby V. — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 09:49:08 PDT

In this thesis, I take the reader through the process and particular challenges of directing The House of Bernarda Alba, from choosing a translation, to casting from a pool of mostly undergraduate actors, to staging a show in-the-round. More particularly, I compare my previous work with adaptation to this process of treating the script as a fixed entity.

I also offer a detailed explanation of the exploratory work I did with the actors in building the physicality of the play-world and exploring the relationships of the characters. For this, I drew heavily on Anne Bogart’s composition exercises, found in The Viewpoints Book. In this thesis, I transcribe and analyze some of the material generated through these exercises.

Finally, I endeavor to prove that a certain freedom can be found through structure, and that the challenge of this production - which was assigned to me rather than a personal choice - helped me develop a more subtle creative voice than I had previously possessed.