Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2016, Theatre

Theatre is a liminal environment between performers and a live audience, and between the past, present and future. Theatre practitioners often bring to life old scripts that have graced the stage many times while highlighting the relevance of key themes and motifs in relation to a modern audience. The work of playwright Henrik Ibsen is produced worldwide because of its modern subjects, despite having been written in the late nineteenth century.Under the direction of Lesley Ferris, I designed the scenic environment for Rebecca Lenkiewicz's version of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People at The Ohio State University. I used a combination of sketches, digital modelling, and a physical white model to communicate my scenic design. By way of reducing, reusing, and recycling, I executed a sustainable scenic environment that complimented the themes of environmental awareness within the play without compromising the aesthetic of the design.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz M.F.A. (Advisor); Mary Tarantino M.F.A (Committee Member); Lesley Ferris PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Architectural; Architecture; Art History; Design; Environmental Education; Environmental Health; Environmental Management; Environmental Studies; Fine Arts; Gender; Gender Studies; Performing Arts; Scandinavian Studies; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies; Womens Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, Theatre

Men on Boats, written by Jaclyn Backhaus recounts the daring expedition of a one-armed captain and his crew to chart the Green and Colorado Rivers in 1869. This historical piece turns quickly to commentary with the playwright's casting note instructing the director to cast entirely people who are non-male identifying. The casting directions paired with an accurate but humorous retelling of the story, make this play the perfect blend of commentary, history and comedy. With the direction of Beth Kattelman, I have designed the scenery, props and lighting for this production of Men on Boats, staged in the Bowen theatre at The Ohio State University. My trio of designs aimed to establish time and place and evoke the massive spectacle of the canyon that these men are exploring. An important task of the designs was to support the highly physical nature of the action and enhance the comedic elements of the play. I also wanted to capture the height and weight of the canyon and make the actors feel trapped in the awe-inspiring surroundings.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz (Advisor); Jeannine Thompson (Committee Member); Beth Kattelman (Committee Member) Subjects: Design

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2023, Theatre

Performance is used as a means of storytelling, to escape, to reflect, to learn, to celebrate, or to understand other perspectives. The Country Wife by William Wycherley is all of the above. It is a multi-faceted script that Wycherley curated to appeal to the masses. Written in 1675, this Restoration play uses wit and comedy to comment on societal structures such as gender norms, class, rank, and relationships. The narrative is funny, raunchy, clever, pointed, self-reflective, and opens itself up to be consumed at a variety of levels. I designed the scenery for the 2022 production at The Ohio State University. This is the detailed analysis of that process.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz (Advisor); Tom Dugdale (Committee Member); Sarah Neville (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Fine Arts; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Theatre

Zombie Prom by John Dempsey and Dana P. Rowe was a musical theatre production presented during the fall semester of 2013 produced by The Ohio State University Department of Theatre. This thesis is a documentation of the process of scenic design for this show. The first chapters are a discussion of the pre-production elements of the project and the collaboration with the production team. Later chapters will discuss the design aspects in terms of the director's concepts, my analysis of the script, the technical aspects that brought the production to the Thurber Theater, and my evaluation of the final product. Briefly, the director's concept for the scenery was to uphold the tenants of the love of artifice, the sentimentality toward the past, and the serious intentions of “pure” Camp.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz MFA (Advisor); Janet Parrott MA (Committee Co-Chair); Amanda Fox MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Design; Theater; Theater Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2020, Theatre

Theatre as an art connects the text of a written play with a live audience. A designer's role in this art is to create an environment which both supports the story and evokes the meaning of the text to the those who share it. By analyzing the contrasting relationships and their surroundings in William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, I created a world which was sophisticated enough to both evoke serious themes pertinent to today's society and maintain the magic and whimsy of the original text. This thesis documents my scenic design process for this production of the Department of Theatre at The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz MFA (Advisor); Dan Gray MFA (Committee Member); Kevin McClatchy MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater; Theater Studies

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2019, Theatre

Legally Blonde the Musical, written by Heather Hach with music and lyrics by Nell Benjamin and Laurence O'Keefe, was produced by The Ohio State University Theatre Department in November, 2018. This thesis document describes the scenic design process for this production, detailing how collaboration with the production team, director, and staff helped shape the evolution of the scenery. Mandy Fox's director's concept, my analysis of the script, and spatial challenges of the Thurber Theatre inspired me to design a scenic environment with multi-functional units that mirror the versatility of the characters themselves.

Committee: Brad Steinmetz (Committee Chair); Amanda Fox (Committee Member); Kristine Kearney (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater; Theater Studies

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2015, Theatre Arts

The purpose of this thesis will be to provide a process for producing a play with multiple scenic locations by focusing on designing and constructing a set. Using the limited physical and monetary resources of a small high school, a specific play will be staged so that the theatre advisor may use this thesis as a guide to walk him through the process.

Committee: Adel Migid (Advisor); James Slowiak (Committee Member); Matt Beresh (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2015, Theatre

City of Angels is a musical written by Larry Gelbart, Cy Coleman, and David Zippel, which was produced by The Ohio State University Department of Theatre in collaboration with the School of Music in the fall semester of 2014. This document discusses the process of designing the scenery in collaboration with the production team. The scenic design process involved consideration of the design aspects for City of Angels, including the Director's concept in relationship to analysis of the text as well as the technical elements of the production's design. This document narrates the scenic process guiding the production of the large-scale, film noir-inspired musical presented in Thurber Theatre to tell the story in a cinematically inspired performance.

Committee: Dan Gray (Advisor); A. Scott Parry (Committee Member); Mary Tarantino (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, Theatre

For my thesis I will be designing scenery for The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by Stephan Adly Guirgis. I am excited to work on this production for multiple reasons. First I would like to design in our thrust space, the Bowen Theatre, for a second time due to the challenges such as its fixed grid, limited back stage space, three sided audience and intimacy of the space. Personally the subject matter of the play hits close to home for me having grown up as a Catholic school student. I enjoy seeing these biblical characters and stories portrayed in current, raw and more truly human ways than they were typically portrayed in my religious training. Finally I found the ability to collaborate with director Jimmy Bohr to be a great learning experience last year when we worked together on the OSU Department of Theatre's production of Spring Awakening. I feel that he has a great ability to connect a design team and I'm eager to collaborate with him on another production.

Committee: Dan Gray (Advisor); Jimmy Bohr (Committee Member); Kristine Kearney (Committee Member); Joy Reilly (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2012, Theatre

The Double Bill, presented by the Ohio State University (OSU) Department of Theatre, interweaved two different plays, Real Women Have Curves and Matchmaker. Each play was quite different, but both shared an underlying tone of women's liberation, female equality and immigration. The Double Bill was a unique scenic design situation where the sets had to help the audience visually travel from 1987's hot and sultry East Los Angeles's sewing shop to 1920's cold Polish village. Real Women Have Curves, written by Josefina L¿¿¿¿pez, was directed by PhD Francesca Spedalieri and Matchmaker written by Patricia Su¿¿¿¿rez was directed by Professor Lesley Ferris. It was very important to find a middle ground between the two directors' concepts to make the scenic environment look synchronized but still at the same time look distinctly different. Both the plays at some level talk about body image issues, cultural differences, immigrant workers and how women are perceived as commodities. But the production also emphasizes female courage, strength and their will to go on. Real Women Have Curves is set in a family-owned sweat shop were five women stitch beautiful dresses for rich thin women, which they would envy due to their own “rubenesque” body types. The story line deals with their matrimonial, communal and cultural beliefs that in turn contribute to determining and at the same time distorting their self-image. The characters are Mexican immigrants, who still fear the “La Migra” (the immigration authorities), even though they are legal. The play is a comedy which sometimes slips to become wry and cynical, but it brings out the importance of realizing ones identity and body-image. Matchmaker is part of an Argentine trilogy entitled The Polish Women. The play was translated by Professor Ana Elena Puga and was the English-language world premiere at OSU. The play focuses on a dreadful moment in the early 20th century were young Jewish women, under the guise of an arranged marria (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Gray (Advisor); Lesley Ferris (Committee Member); Janet Parrott (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2010, Theatre

Summer and Smoke by Tennessee Williams is being produced by The Ohio State University Theatre Department in the autumn quarter, 2009. The production will be in the Thurber Theatre and directed by faculty member Jimmy Bohr. As the scenic designer, I will provide the atmosphere and environment of the play as well as the physical requirements determined by the action described in the script. This document records my involvement in the production process. Briefly, Bohr's concept for this production is focused on the love story that happens between Alma and John. The story is set in a small fictitious town in Mississippi named Glorious Hill, just before World War I. It is a time when the last of Victorian social propriety was becoming extinct and the world was about to change forever. This love story is a bittersweet description of that loss of innocence. The director is focused on the “Poetic Realism” of Williams' writing. Aesthetically, it is important to the director that the heat of the Deep South is represented on stage. I will accomplish this with a canopy of trees, Spanish moss, and other plant life indigenous to Mississippi. The lighting design will also enhance this effect. Another major concern of the director is to have seamless scene shifts. This will be accomplished through the use of three wagons that will move without any visible means. The ever-present angel fountain, named Eternity, needs to be center stage for the entire show. Finally, the American Gothic style needs to be represented in the architecture of the two houses on stage.

Committee: Dan Gray MFA (Committee Chair); Jimmy Bohr MFA (Committee Member); Mark Shanda MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, Theatre

Machinal written by Sophie Treadwell, was produced by The Ohio State University department of theatre in the winter quarter of 2009. This thesis documents the scenic design process for the production. Chapter one covers the design team, which included the director, lighting, sound and costume designer and the technical aspects of the theatre space. The following chapters explore script analysis and society's influences on Treadwell's work. In later chapters I explore the director's concept and how it influenced my design and the technical process of producing the show. I end with my reaction to the design process and production. In her director's statement, Lesley Ferris explained her idea of a bleak world that portrayed society as a machine. This was achieved with abstract and constructivist lines and shapes in the design. The scenery was “suggestive and stylized” rather than a realistic environment. The design employed the use of projections and shadow play as the backdrop to help create atmosphere. An intimate space helped achieve a claustrophobic environment expressed in the script. To achieve this effect scaffolding was erected in the auditorium, surrounding the audience. The set itself was constructed out of steel, corrugated panels and expanded metal to create a harsh and stark world. Most of the acting space was on the apron of the stage to bring the action closer to the audience. These elements helped create the bleak mechanical world and the intimate and claustrophobic environment that was required for the production.

Committee: Daniel Gray M.F.A (Advisor); Mark Shanda M.F.A (Committee Member); Lesley Ferris Ph.D (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater

MFA, Kent State University, 2012, College of the Arts / School of Theatre and Dance

To: Kent State University, School of Theatre and Dance: Graduate Studies Committee Cc: Design and Technology Committee Re: M.F.A. Thesis Proposal It is my proposal to design the scenery for The Crucible as my thesis project. This production brings with it a unique set of obstacles which include: 1) devising a unit set that can incorporate four different interior locales; 2) incorporating the director's concept of “entanglement” into the symbolism of the scenic elements while respecting the playwright Arthur Miller's insistence on strict adherence to the time and place of the script; and 3) creating a design that simulates the elemental textures and aesthetics of the time period while remaining within a budget that does not allocate for actual wood. This project will provide me the opportunity to explore my approach to scenic design from both a historical and symbolic perspective. Miller's play explores themes of religious fundamentalism, persecution, fear, and self-preservation. These themes continue to resonate within contemporary culture as keenly as they did in the mid twentieth century when it was written. Director Mark Monday's concept, emphasizing a journey towards salvation, combined with the theme of entanglement and power of authority, creates a platform on which I can sculpt a scenic vessel. The Wright-Curtis Theatre's unique architecture will create its own challenges in the manipulation of the space. Director Mark Monday expressed his desire to draw the audience into the story physically as well as emotionally. There is a need to reflect the simple, yet austere, Puritan life, while allowing the complexity of the story to unfold before the audience. This creates a challenge to shape a space that focuses both the action on stage and the audience's attention to the action; a set that will not only pull in the audience, but the actors as well, into the world of the play. A balance must be created between historical representatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Raynette Smith (Advisor); Mark Monday (Committee Member); Stephen Zapytowski (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater