▼ In February of 2007, Daniel Radcliffe, then 17, began his run as Alan Strang in the revival of Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play Equus. In this play, Radcliffe had his first major stage role, and in the final, climactic (and extended) scene, his character Alan Strang was completely nude. The actor who has played the iconic Harry Potter for nearly half of his life, whom we have seen grow from an 11-year-old boy to the young man he is today, stripped naked, his limp penis on display for the audience and, thanks to camera phones, anyone searching on the internet. Daniel Radcliffe’s celebrity, his youth, and the spectacle surrounding his naked body have all had tremendous impact on how Equus, a 1973 play about worship, madness and desire, was received; this thesis is interested in the questions how, why, and to what end. Equus is a complicated play, and the inclusion of a celebrity with child star status complicated it further. It further commercialized a play that paradoxically uses avant-garde techniques to reify the status quo. However, I think that all of these complications do not put us at odds with the themes of Equus; instead, they reinforce them. Thus, I argue that the 2007 and 2008 revivals of Equus starring Daniel Radcliffe were, though commercialized and steeped in celebrity culture, highly effective in remaking a 1973 relic into an insightful contemporary investigation of passion, madness, and what each of us may have made our personal gods. Advisors/Committee Members: Lockford, Lesa.

▼ This dissertation is a documentation of my somaesthetic engagement in the Korean culture and subsequent participation in its treasured folk performance of Talchum. By placing my body in such a way as to experience the demands and expectations of the masked performance and the communities that created and sustain it, I was able to access the repertoire of Korean history and performance in ways previously unavailable to foreigners like myself. Using narrative, and ethnographic writing styles, I relay experiences with the form and its practitioners that generated the foundation of my introduction to and understanding of the folk tradition. These navigations of a largely non-written performance allowed me a perspective of the preservation efforts taking place in Korea that did not track with my experiences within the Talchum community. This disparity between the way in which I was being asked to accept the unbroken lineage of a preserved historical form as a tourist and the conflicting reports of lost masks, confusion over nomenclature, and performances that were given up as lost to history only to be revived to great popular acclaim and financial success led me to question the perceived resistance to the well-established notion of invented traditions. The efforts marshaled toward the empty repetition of a heritage performance do not credit the ways in which Talchum continues to adapt to the ebb and flow of the culture that created it. Therefore, privileging the heritage performance narrative over that of adaptive performances withholds an important, even critical element of Talchum practice and performance today. It would then be imperative that further inquiries into Talchum go beyond the fragments of English translation regarding the heritage efforts to include, at the very least, an acknowledgement of the adaptive work being done outside the legitimating forces of government approval and financial support. I conclude that, while the current methodology of preservation is beneficial to a point, a narrative that gives voice to the improvisational and participatory nature of Talchum such as that demonstrated by Kangneung Talchum and The Gwangdae adaptive performances might offer stronger criteria by which to evaluate the efficacy of preservation. Advisors/Committee Members: Magelssen, Scott.

▼ Since the emergence of outdoor historical dramas as popular summer tourist fare in the late 1950s and 1960s, Indian characters have played a dominant role in this theatrical genre. In many cases, the depictions of Native Americans in these dramas have remained static over the years and continue to portray Indigenous cultures in ways that reflect white constructions of the Indian “Other.” In some instances, such as in the cases of Unto These Hills and the Under the Cherokee Moon, Native Americans in the area surrounding the production site have instigated changes to the way their cultures are represented in these performances. This project is a historical study that analyzes production and performance choices which engage representations of Native Americans in outdoor historical dramas, representations that have historically tended toward reinscriptions of unhelpful stereotypes. Specifically, I analyze recent changes in these representations to explore how Native American cultures are now portrayed in this type of performance. The dramas I examine include Trumpet in the Land, The White Savage, Tecumseh!, Blue Jacket, Unto These Hills, and Under the Cherokee Moon. My research calls upon interviews with production participants, close readings of the productions, archival materials, and secondary sources. Instead of treating each production as a separate case study, I read across the various dramas in order to explore the issues that emerge from the representational practices of outdoor historical dramas. Some of the issues I consider include how the absence or presence of a Native American community in the area surrounding a productions affects the depictions of Native American cultures in the show; the Native American stereotypes that have tended to traditionally result from these dramas; the issues of accuracy and authenticity in the productions; and the changes that have been made to production choices, and thereby representations, in some outdoor dramas. The depictions of Native American cultures in outdoor historical dramas are not innocuous. It is important to problematize how and by whom indigenous cultures are presented to audiences in these dramas, as well as the effects these presentations have on the cultures being represented. Advisors/Committee Members: Magelssen, Scott.

▼ Theater history records centuries of intersections between the scientific understanding of human behaviors and the skills needed by actors to create representational drama. This study reviews a shared historical narrative between science and acting with selected examples from medical traditions and acting traditions. Advancements in twenty-first century neuroscience have changed our understandings of basic principles governing the body and behaviors which pushes theater artists and educators to reconsider how we teach acting. This dissertation proposes acting exercises derived from neuroscientific behavior models which focus on performance memory and emotion expression. A serious study of acting requires a strong understanding of embodied knowledge, knowledge gained from experience. In order to guide acting students through the acting techniques, the study focuses on defining terms and basic scientific concepts and then applying the science through classroom exercises. These proposed exercises, Memory Accumulation and Emotion Scales, are designed for first-year theater undergraduates as part of any standard beginning acting class. The Memory Accumulation exercises introduce memory techniques of encoding and decoding, the concept of chunking (accumulating bits of information into larger performance sequences), and the concept of binding (associating different types of memory into a unified performance memory). The Emotion Scales exercises introduce basic emotions and the progression of building compound and complex emotions with the technique of accessing qualia, controlling intensity, and releasing emotions safely. Ultimately, using scientific models as teaching models, the proposed exercises presented in this dissertation define and identify basic memory systems and basic emotions conceptually (through scientific models) and experientially (through acting exercises). Advisors/Committee Members: Shields, Ronald E.