Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

Anne Frank is linked to her contemporaries in about 80% of 18 English-language published and produced plays. The remaining plays pair Frank and African American icons Harriet Tubman, Emmett Till, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Research on dramatic literature with Frank as a character, the writing of plays linking her with African American personages, or history, analysis, or comparison of the process of multiple plays about Frank does not exist. A few articles extant compare the Goodrich and Hackett play with the Kesselman rewrite, a dissertation on five plays about Frank (those five plays are in the 80% mentioned earlier). The central question of this dissertation is why the playwrights of Harriet and Anne: An Original Narrative, Janet Langhart Cohen's Anne & Emmett: A One-Act Play, and Letters from Anne and Martin unite Anne Frank and African American historical figures. What were the playwrights' intentions with this linkage, and how were they fulfilled? This dissertation intends to fill this research gap in theatre history. The playwrights were interviewed using a prepared questionnaire completed by mail, email, telephone, or Zoom to discover the reason(s) for writing the three works. The writers answered using their preferred methods, and results were compiled within the work's question/answer format. Articles and the playwrights' websites were mined for additional historical data about the works and writers. The research found the plays to be works of remembrance/cultural trauma written by playwrights who shared seminal experiences regarding Anne Frank and the African American icons. The writers were driven by intense feelings of social justice, inspiring their creative works. These playwrights used Anne Frank, Harriet Tubman, Emmett Till, and Martin Luther King Jr. to communicate their thematic messages of social justice. They urged their audiences to keep these icons' history from repeating itself and honor those entities. This dissertation is available in open (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2024, Leadership and Change

This creative dissertation highlights the feminist leadership qualities of a social revolutionist, Funmilayo Ransome Kuti, a native of Abeokuta, Nigeria. Her struggle for equity and justice profoundly encouraged the empowerment of Indigenous women during her time. The undeniable truth is that black women have played a pivotal role in the fight for equal rights and justice, particularly in the United States. While the social struggles of American black female revolutionaries such as Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King, Dorothy Height, Ella Baker, and Dorothy Cotton are documented and celebrated, little or nothing is known about their African counterparts. This creative dissertation attempts to fill that gap. Funmilayo Ransome Kuti mobilized Indigenous women to march in protest against unjust tax laws imposed on women by the Indigenous monarchy and the patriarchal agenda of her town between 1946 and 1949. Her social struggle would end the unjust tax laws that made way for Indigenous women's suffrage, a significant milestone in the history of women's rights. Funmilayo's life and achievements rank her as a foremost Yoruba feminist leader and a historical icon; her social struggle is contextualized into a two-act play titled Lioness of Lisabi to encourage and inspire change in postmodern and postcolonial women. The creative process is not an attempt to provide an accurate historical account of the social struggle that Funmilayo led; rather, it is to show how Funmilayo defied the odds and how her life and social struggles deconstruct Western constructs that paint women as weak, domesticated species, and inferior to men. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive (https://aura.antioch.edu/) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, East Asian Languages and Literatures

Framing the learning and use of foreign language as “performed culture,” this dissertation explores ways to train learners into performers who can embody physical interaction in their language use. In this dissertation, the researcher compares the pedagogy of performance as implemented in the performance-oriented Chinese language classroom to the instructional techniques used by kunqu practitioners to train performers of Chinese theatre. The dissertation synthesizes data from a study, involving classroom observations and interviews with students, as a source for considering the implementation of methods and techniques in the Performed Culture Approach to Chinese language pedagogy. The dissertation describes the tools of transmission in Chinese kunqu theatrical performance training, drawing connections between these two performance-oriented pedagogical endeavors. The researcher clarifies the role(s) of the Chinese language instructor in a physical performance-centric language learning environment and makes pedagogical recommendations regarding the training of teachers in the Performed Culture Approach. Through this dissertation, the researcher contributes to the theoretical foundations of the Performed Culture Approach to foreign language pedagogy and provides a practical analysis of the effects such pedagogy can have on learners. The dissertation concludes with practical recommendations for teacher training, including training modules on how teacher trainers can guide foreign language teachers to incorporate physicality into performable textbook dialogues to teach culturally specific behaviors. Foreign language teachers will benefit from this research by learning how a pedagogy of bodily performance positively impacts students' understanding of the target culture and language, and students will benefit from their teachers' fortified pedagogical approach by experiencing embodied language use that is culturally appropriate, meaningful, and memorable.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, East Asian Languages and Literatures

This dissertation aims to shed light on why literati and scholar-officials developed an increased interest in theater from the mid-sixteenth century onward (aka, the late Ming dynasty). A substantial body of scholarship has examined late Ming literati's embrace of playwriting, but further research is needed to delineate the cultural mechanics of this “theatrical turn.” In this dissertation, I will approach this process through the lens of cross-genre interactions. Specifically, I will explore in what ways theater came to inform other cultural practices in everyday literati life, and vice versa. Examining the life writings of three late Ming literati, who were active during the Wanli reign (r. 1573-1620), this study shows how they employed different rhetoric, performative, and perceptual aspects of theatricality to innovate other existing literary forms. While being part of a highly interactive community of theater aficionados, they each chose a distinct literary genre other than theater as their primary medium to recall and record their theatrical experiences. The core analysis of this study centers around the multidirectional generic interplay between theater and the three literary genres they chose to write in respectively: poetry, diary, and preface. The chapters focus on how different aspects of theatricality informed traditional genres through the lenses of the construction of multiple points-of-view, the perception of time, and the presentation of bodily experience. At the same time, I examine these heterogenous genres as different forms of “life writing” to foreground how literati writers' were remarkably attentive to everyday life. My analysis reveals theater's impact on literati's literary responses to their everyday lives by way of innovative generic interplay. I do not treat “genre” as a static category, but as a malleable expressive vehicle that was transformed in the very process of being adapted to the new subject of theater. Moreover, adopting (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Theatre

Over the past decade, especially in the United States, there has been a significant increase in what has commonly come to be known as athlete activism. Examples of this phenomenon include such moments as Colin Kaepernick's anthem protest in the National Football League (NFL) and the campaign for pay equality undertaken by the United States Women's National Team (USWNT). Though these examples, and many others like them, have affected important and tangible social change, there are many in the United States who claim that the practice of sport activism only serves to unnecessarily politicize the realm of sport. Opponents of sport activism often argue that sport should be kept separated from more serious matters such as pressing social and political issues. However, this argument is predicated on the assumption that sport is inherently apolitical or that it somehow exists independently of societal structures, which is demonstrably false. In “Finding Hope at the Arena: A Performance Studies Approach to Sport,” I make use of performance studies frameworks to investigate sport as a meaning-making mode of live performance with utopian potentiality. Using performance scholar Jill Dolan's theorization of the utopian performative as a theoretical framework, I examine several key moments and eras in United States sport history to interrogate the notion that sport is, or ever has been, separate from social and political issues. Through archival and performance analysis methods of research, I interrogate the ways in which sport, as a genre of live performance, produces myriad utopian visions of the country that often serve to uphold or critique the dominant social order. Moreover, I imagine this study as a step towards what I call a model of utopian sport spectatorship. Utopian sport spectatorship facilitates a form of engagement with sport similar to that of a theatrical production. In this model of spectatorship, participants, both those involved in the aspects of athletic c (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Theatre

This dissertation focuses on twenty-first century American approaches to producing Shakespeare beyond the well-known festivals and companies. The dissertation looks at the following: work done by "small-scale" Shakespeare companies to bring Shakespeare's plays to communities, the potential advantages and disadvantages of a company model that de-centers the role of the director, and the ways in which “translation” can give marginalized groups a voice in Shakespeare production. I argue that the work of small-scale Shakespeare companies, the actor-directed model, and the process of interrogating Shakespeare's work through translation, are all powerful tools for making Shakespeare more accessible and making the practice of theatre more egalitarian. Chapter One discusses Steel City Shakespeare Center, an example of what I call a “small-scale” Shakespeare company. I argue that the work done by companies such as Steel City is of just as much value as the work done by larger, fully professional companies because small-scale companies bring Shakespeare's work to specific communities and provide artistic opportunities for people who are not following an elite professional path. Chapter Two focuses on the actor-manager model that the American Shakespeare Center (ASC) adopted in 2021 and explores decentering directors as a way of making theatre a safer working environment for actors. Chapter Three discusses Play On Shakespeare, which began as a project, sponsored by Oregon Shakespeare Festival, that commissioned playwrights to “translate” Shakespeare's play into modern English. I discuss Play On as an opportunity to create a more inclusive vision of Shakespeare performance, and I examine the extent to which translation makes Shakespeare more accessible and the ways in which these translations allow a wider variety of voices in Shakespeare. The study explores the ways in which these three companies increase Shakespeare's accessibility and uses the companies to discuss the iss (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

This reflective practitioner research study explores the potentials for the reimplementation of effective university theatre outreach programming for K-12 schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as both populations navigate shifting education cultures. Through this study, the researcher asks the questions: How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected and continues to affect our respective learning communities? What factors are influencing the specific needs and preferences from theatre education programs? What are the challenges of creating a program that addresses the needs of two distinct education sectors? How do critical and creative pedagogies in theatre education inform a way forward that empowers all individuals involved? Utilizing the 2023 Ohio State University Theatre Performance and Education Outreach School Tour as a case study, this inquiry investigates the ways in which the tour structure may provide a space for students and teachers to participate in critical pedagogies and dialogical practices within the classroom structure. Through examination of historical archive review, teacher interviews, and observational reflection, this study concludes with recommendations for practical strategies that encourage our respective educational communities to lean on each other's expertise nd to center the voices of and lived experiences of multi-generational students within the creative practice.

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Theater

My thesis, SLASHER: The Ethical Way to Kill a Woman, investigates how the horror industry has sexualized violence against women, catering to a male audience and reinforcing misogynistic social standards. I explored the issue of slasher genre misogyny through an academic paper, a production of Allison Moore's 2007 play Slasher, and a reflection on the production process. This project serves as a culmination of my academic and practical skills including research, design, and project execution.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2024, Art

The goal of this research was to develop a pathway for improving audience experience within playable theatre by defining and intentionally sequencing audience interactions within this genre of interactive and immersive performance. With the performing arts industry facing a crisis marked by dwindling ticket sales post-pandemic, theatre artists have an opportunity to attract new audiences by producing playable theatre productions that offer audience experiences that are as engaging of the senses and mind as popular immersive entertainment today. The development of the Audience Interaction Taxonomy for Playable Theatre, which defines and describes specific audience interaction modes, allows for the strategic design of the audience experience for game-based performance through sequencing and pacing of such interactions, ensuring heightened psychological engagement and narrative comprehension. Centered around the production of I Wish: A Theatrical Escape Room, an audience interaction model is developed on the foundation of the new taxonomy, designed to reduce cognitive load by limiting concurrent audience interaction modes to two. The study employed a pragmatic qualitative approach, utilizing observations, surveys, and interviews to understand participant experiences and behaviors in this context to refine and build upon the taxonomy and the sequencing of audience interactions. Understanding and defining audience interactions and experience within a playable theatre context is the first step in developing evaluation and design tools so that theatre artists feel empowered to confidently create immersive and interactive performance that delivers the intended audience experience.

MFA, Kent State University, 2024, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

The apocalypse is nigh, and in fact has been upon us for some time without anybody noticing. In the idyllic suburban town of Mansville, three 1960s housewives find themselves in a battle to the death when all the men of the town suddenly become the swarms of the undead. Will their former husbands and neighbors eat them alive? Will they survive the new zombie-ridden landscape? Or will they thrive in their new testosterone-free society? (Wo)Mansville explores themes of sexism, misogyny, motherhood, femininity, spousal abuse, gender inequality, survival, and, of course, zombies.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

She Kills Monsters by Qui Nguyen is a production that discusses loss, escapism, queer culture, and self-confidence. The production was the first production performed in the Proscenium Theatre located in the new Theatre, Film, and Media Arts (TFMA) Building on OSU's main campus. The performances ran from October 26th through November 3rd, 2023. Important themes of the production include escapism through role-play and fantasy, sexual identity and queer culture, and the process of working through grief and loss in a way that honors and remembers those that have passed. In addition to designing the costumes for the production, I was also tasked with designing and constructing puppets for the production, which included a five-headed dragon and a beholder (a monster from Dungeons and Dragons). In my accompanying thesis, I will discuss the play and its historical and cultural importance, the director's concept, overall design concept, character analysis, a description of the production process and a self-evaluation of the final design.

Master of City and Regional Planning, The Ohio State University, 2024, Architecture

Marginalized urban communities often have historical, collective trauma. Some scholars suggest approaching these contexts using therapeutic planning. Meanwhile, theatre has become a niche method of community engagement in other fields, particularly a participatory method called Theatre of the Oppressed. This method uses a Forum Theatre technique to empower oppressed communities to work together towards solutions while engaging in rich dialogue. This study addresses the lack of literature about the effects of Forum Theatre in a planning context by asking if Forum Theatre community workshops could be an effective method of engagement for therapeutic planning in communities with collective trauma. I analyze case studies, articles, and practitioners of Forum Theatre to gather qualitative data about the outcomes of using this form of theatre in community engagement practice. By comparing data to the goals of therapeutic planning and therapeutic indicators, I found a strong indication that Forum Theatre can have the desired therapeutic effects to be a useful tool for therapeutic planning in communities with trauma.

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

The subconscious mind gathers a lot about a person based on visuals alone. In the world of live theatre, this initial impression is highly controlled by the costume designer. Each element of live theatre combines to create a story that captures the attention of the audience; the actor walks onto the stage, their mind and heart completely in their performance, surrounded by an involved environment and adorned with skillfully detailed garments. Together with my professors and associates at The Ohio State University, we produced a surreal yet modern telling of Blood Wedding by early 20th century playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. We dove into the text, found our balance between poetry and realism, and created a world of bittersweet love. This thesis documents the costume design process from that production. The five chapters will discuss the producing situation, concept and design scheme, character analyses, production, and self-evaluation of the project.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

This dissertation project uses a phenomenological approach to better understand the aural experience of audiences in theatrical productions and to advance the study of the art of sound design beyond the level of technical manuals. The arrangement of the audience within the theatre space is an often-overlooked variable that affects how the audience listens to and contextualizes the performance. In addition to aural framing, this dissertation explores the concepts of noise, silence, aural intimacy, mediatization, immersive audio, audience reception, and the communal experience of listening in thrust, arena, proscenium, and immersive stages.

Doctor of Education, Ashland University, 2024, College of Education

This qualitative study investigates how drama education influences the socioemotional learning and leadership development among Black adolescent females. Existing research has highlighted the benefits of drama education for personal and social development, yet there is a lack of focus on the experiences of Black adolescent females within this domain. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring the ways in which drama education affects socioemotional learning and leadership development among this demographic. Utilizing a phenomenological approach, participants were selected through convenience and purposeful sampling methods and in-depth interviews, to capture their subjective experiences. Through thematic analysis, four themes emerged from each research question shedding light on the transformative role of drama education in understanding emotions, forming identity, improving mental health, and enhancing socialization and interpersonal skills with peers. It also contributed to their development as leaders by communicating and collaborating with others, working effectively and efficiently on teams, learning organization, planning and time management skills and adaptability. The findings of this study highlight the overall significance of incorporating arts education into the curriculum, particularly Black adolescent females. These insights have important implications for educators, policymakers, and practitioners seeking to promote holistic development and equity in educational settings.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Theatre

This thesis addresses how many predominantly white institutions have few endeavors attempting to integrate playwrights and stories from marginalized communities. While Patricia Ybarra's anti-racist approach, coalitional casting in an academic institutional setting, advocates for the allyship of privileged student performers becoming visual place-holders to share these marginalized works, there is still a glaring question: How do student performers represent characters culturally different from themselves without employing stereotypes or turning to racial mimicry? In this thesis, I discuss my process and observations directing an elevated staged-reading of Roosters, by Milcha Sanchez-Scott utilizing the Enneagram, a psychology typology. I center this process within conversations of the Enneagram and the actor, coalitional casting as best practice, and the continuous need for inclusionary and anti-racist pedagogy practices in Higher Education theatre departments. Ultimately, I argue that the Enneagram, as a character-building tool in collaboration with culturally conscious dramaturgy, offers an approach towards the character-building practice which exchanges embodied stereotypes for ally-driven representations of previously marginalized performance pieces. By illuminating how the Enneagram's involvement better satisfies coalitional casting's goals of allyship, underscoring racial and ethnic inequality, and incorporating diversity into performance, I conclude that the Enneagram is worthy of inclusion in anti-racist theatre pedagogy at the institutional level. The implications of this suggest the Enneagram's contribution to coalitional casting in Higher Education encourages actors to properly steward responsible cultural representation on stage.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, Theatre

This dissertation examines growing trends in the practice and theory of performing fragments from Greek Comedies and Satyr Plays for contemporary audiences. The surviving fragments are adapted according to their size after “careful research and artistic mastery” (Timothy Wutrich, 1995). Fragmentary plays with 75% of their text intact, such as Menander's New Comedy 'Samia,' are restored by filling up the play's lacunae. Fragmentary plays with 50% of their text intact, such as Sophocles' Satyr Play 'The Trackers,' are restored by using metatheatrical techniques. Fragmentary plays with less than 25% of their text intact, like Nikokhares' Old Comedy 'Herakles the Producer,' are reseeded and made into new creative works. This dissertation outlines different methodologies for effectively reviving fragmentary comedies and satyr plays.

Master of Music (MM), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Music Composition

Beethoven's Razor is a MicroOpera scored for piano, percussion, and three singers. The plot centers around Peter (tenor) and his quest to recompose Beethoven's Ninth Symphony note for-note without ever having heard it. To do this, Peter begins changing his lifestyle and environment to match Beethoven's at the time of the symphony's composition. He eventually goes to drastic measures to embody the German composer, compromising his identity and mind in the process. The piece explores this journey through the interactions of Peter and his partner Freddie (mezzo), and a young boy named Tobias (soprano) whom Peter hires to be a stand-in for Beethoven's nephew Karl. Through this quasi-surreal plot, the piece tackles two overarching themes. The primary theme is the role of suffering and hardship in the creation of art. This theme is conveyed by showing the harm that Peter enacts on himself and others in pursuit of his goals. The secondary theme is authorship and artistic voice. This theme is explored through commentary about whether Peter's creation constitutes art, and whether artistic vision can be achieved through imitation. Musically, the piece is structured around developing harmonic and melodic representations of each character, as well as insertions of passages from Beethoven's music. Two arias are the source of the original material, one for Peter in which he reflects on his life's goal, and one for Freddie in which they lament the harm that Peter is causing. The musical material of these arias is original, and serves as the harmonic and melodic basis for the rest of the opera. The plot for this piece was inspired by Jorge Luis Borges' short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. Key plot elements were developed using historical accounts of Beethoven's life, and close study of the Ninth Symphony informed much of the musical material. Other musical resources included significant operas of the last century, includ (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, History

Even as ballet is often associated with elite, dominant-class culture, it has become popularized through artistic, political, and social mechanisms beginning in the eighteenth century in Europe and continuing into the twentieth century in the United States. Utilizing visual, textual, and critical archival sources, and ethnographic and choreomusicological method, I argue that American musical theatre dance and its offshoots in the twentieth century popularized ballet as dance form in the United States. The choreomusicological concept of diegetic dance is useful in the revealing of musical theatre audiences' willingness to accept balletic form when characters “know they are dancing.” Although US society has difficulty grappling with issues of class generally and working-class experience and values more specifically, working-class content has been embraced in musical theatre toward the presentation of a common Americanness. This imagery of universality, in contrast to the realities of structural class inequality, created both the acceptance of ballet by a class-diverse audience, and its contribution to the definition of dance in the popular imagination—in evidence in a vast range of seemingly-divergent, non-ballet dance genres. From its origins in the sixteenth-century French royal court, through bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolution, and liberal democracy in France, the Soviet Union, and the United States, ballet form has endured. A significant body of scholarship deals with ballet institutions in the face of cultural change. I seek to understand how the physical technique has endured in societies that rhetorically reject monarchic and aristocratic assumptions. In coming to terms with the ways in which ballet informs definitions of dance and the genre's popular reception, I suggest that transitions in this small corner of the cultural landscape help to explain tendencies in American culture to both invest in hierarchic systems and appropriate elite privile (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, Comparative Studies

This dissertation theorizes the concept of enchantment, articulating it as an orientation towards affects, embodied experiences, and material cultures. The experience of enchantment is amplified by confusing space and time, calling forth social fantasies, and attuning oneself to the natural world. Enchantment is also a potent energizing force, capable of transforming the world around it, whether by arranging subjects and relationships in ways that produce and maintain antiblackness, orientalism, and misogyny, or offering life-giving possibilities that resist the harm of hegemonic forces. Enchantment informs grotesque and fantastical representations of racialized subjects and encourages sustained investment in consumer practices that are never satisfied. Yet enchantment also resides in moments of respite, wonder, and nostalgia for subaltern people. This dissertation aligns the life-giving possibilities of enchantment with creative practice and expression, demonstrating how imagination and fantasy allow the formation of new and more expansive worlds where marginalized peoples can thrive. Yet even while engaging in liberative artistic praxis, subjects must often negotiate dominant capitalist and colonial logics that inform the materials and practices of their world-making.