Matching Items (5)
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- All Subjects: Drama
- All Subjects: Theater and society
- Genre: Academic theses
- Genre: Masters Thesis
- Creators: Underiner, Tamara
Description
In this dissertation I use Henri Lefebvre's concept of the production of social space to study how political theatre companies and artists in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, appropriate and resignify, through performance, their current social space as a strategy to contest Puerto Rico's neoliberal state policies. As Lefebvre suggests, modern industrial cities like San Juan maintain hegemonic power relations through spatial practices, processes through which users and inhabitants of the city conceive, perceive and live space. Lefebvre further suggests that for social justice to be possible, space must be resignified in ways that expose otherwise invisibilized struggles for social belonging and differentiation. I argue that theatrical performance, by staging various social conflicts and contradictions between the dominating space and the appropriating space, can produce new "performance cartographies" through which its audiences – in large part disenfranchised from the neoliberal processes so celebrated elsewhere on the island – may find ways to resignify space or envision new spaces for social justice on their own behalf. Specifically, I examine five theatre groups and artists from oppressed sectors in San Juan, whose work is to various degrees in opposition to neoliberalism, to reveal how both their artistic and quotidian performances might be resignifying space toward these ends. How does the work of Agua, Sol y Sereno, Y no había luz, Teatro Breve, Deborah Hunt and Tito Kayak strategically claim or appropriate space? What kind of knowledges emerge from these spatial tactics, and how are they helping envision new forms of living and social justice in the city?
ContributorsGonzález, Jorge (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Tompkins, Cynthia (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Drawing from Foucault's notion of heterotopias, my dissertation identifies and examines three distinct but related events that resignified (re-imagined) Chile during 2010, the year of its Bicentenary, namely: the Rescue of the 33 Miners trapped in the San José mine, the Chilean Military Parade performed in celebration of Chilean Independence, and the Mapuche Hunger Strike of 32 indigenous people accused of terrorism by the Chilean State. My central hypothesis states that these three events constitute heterotopias with strong performative components that, by enacting a utopian and a dystopian nation, denounce the flaws of Chilean society. I understand heterotopias as those recursive systems that invert, perfect or contest the society they mirror. In other words: heterotopias are discursive constructions and material manifestations of social relations that dispute, support, or distort cultural assumptions, structures, and practices currently operating in the representational spaces of a given society. In addition to following the six heterotopological principles formulated by Foucault, these case studies have performance as the central constituent that defines their specificity and brings the heterotopias into existence. Due to the performative nature of these heterotopias, I have come to call them performance heterotopias, that is, sets of behaviors that enact utopias in the historical world, the place in which we live, the site in which "the erosion of our lives, our time and our history occurs," as Foucault puts it. Here, performance would act as the interface, the point of interaction, and suture between the conceived, the perceived and the representational spaces each heterotopia articulates. Thus, a performance heterotopia would be a particular type of heterotopia which is enacted through performance. A relevant aspect that emerged from my research is that heterotopic places not only mirror, contest, and compensate their own host society, but also refer to, and intersect with other contemporaneous heterotopias enacted in that society. In my conclusion I suggest that such interactions also happen between heterotopias that emerge in different countries and cultures. If so, the mapping of utopias enacted in the macro socio geographies of Latin American countries could offer new perspectives to understand the sociopolitical processes that are underway in the region.
ContributorsBravo Goldsmith, Néstor (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Melo, Carla (Committee member) / Foster, David W (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis examines the play Qian Dayin zhichong Xie Tianxiang, written by the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) playwright Guan Hanqing (c.1225-1302). The first chapter of this paper provides brief background information about northern style Yuan drama (zaju) as well as a plot summary and notes about the analysis and translation. Through a close reading of the play, I hope to illustrate how the play's complicated ending and lack of complete resolution reveals why it has received relatively little attention from scholars who have previously discussed other strong, intelligent female characters in Guan Hanqing's plays. The second chapter of this thesis includes translation of the play that is comprised of a wedge preceding the four acts. Before each act of the play is a critical introduction and analysis of the act to follow. Although many of Guan Hanqing's plays have been translated into English, this play has never been translated.
ContributorsByrnes, Kelli (Author) / West, Stephen H. (Thesis advisor) / Zou, Yu (Committee member) / Ling, Xiaoqiao (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
In this dissertation, I translate and provide a critical analysis of the Iranian play, Tomb Dwellers (2009), by Hussein Kiyani. It was first staged after the contested presidential election in Iran in 2009 which brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into power for a second term. The play depicts the socioeconomic situation of Iran and its relation to other countries, the situation of women and the working class during Ahmadinejad’s two terms of presidency. Tomb Dwellers is written as a comedy, a genre more likely to make it past censors in Iran or other despotic countries. My research and translation project are sparked by questions that move in two directions simultaneously: one, toward understanding the sociopolitical context for theatre in Iran after the revolution of 1979; the other, toward the challenges of translating into English a play that stands as a social metaphor in its own historical context. Regarding the former, which forms the basis of my critical analysis, I explore the strategies artists have used to avoid the limitations imposed by the authorities. In making this play available to English-speaking readers at a time of political tension between Iran and the United States I offer to USAmerican audiences a more nuanced perspective of the way Iranian people feel about their government and its relation to other countries. This play is both timely and informative. Timely because of the tensions between the US and the Middle East. Informative because it represents the Iranian community and may serve to create a bridge between the two cultures. Translating and staging this play along with the critical analysis I am providing will help American audiences and immigrants from other countries to know more about Iran in a creative and entertaining way.
ContributorsMadani Sarbarani, Fatemeh (Author) / Underiner, Tamara (Thesis advisor) / Mahmoodi-Bakhtiari, Behrooz (Thesis advisor) / Reyes, Guillermo (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This research scrutinizes theatre teaching practice through a teacher perspective to find mechanisms that enable health promotion and quality theatre-making skills for students. The critical investigations conducted are twofold. First, I examine the intersection of my 18 years of experience teaching high school drama for connections to theatre and health research. I employ a narrative inquiry method to analyze lived experience to create an initial health promotion framework. And second, I interrogate that framework investigating the experience of a focus group of other high school drama teachers, a high school counselor, and a psychologist. This study reveals that drama teachers perceive their drama programs as psychologically, socially, and emotionally health-promoting for involved students. Furthermore, this study identifies the complex processes, relationships, and components of the theatre-making that the teachers pinpoint as preconditions and mechanisms that enhance and enable student flourishing. The teachers describe themselves as key to health promotion by modeling the artistry of theatre and the art form's social and emotional skills. Their narratives demonstrate that flexible time, their students, and the relationships they build with them as preconditions to maximize health promotion. Specifically, they identify the creation of a safe, supportive environment as foundational to the process.
ContributorsOlsen, Nicola (Author) / Etheridge-Woodson, Stephani (Thesis advisor) / Underiner, Tamara (Committee member) / McAvoy, Mary (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021