Matching Items (19)
Filtering by
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
Description
The original-practices movement as a whole claims its authority from early modern theatrical conditions. Some practitioners claim Shakespeare in many ways as their co-creator; asserting that they perform the plays as Shakespeare intended. Other companies recognize the impossibility of an authorial text, and for them authority shifts to the Renaissance theatre apparatus as a whole. But the reality is that all of these companies necessarily produce modern theatre influenced by the 400 years since Shakespeare. Likewise, audiences do not come to these productions and forget the intervening centuries. This dissertation questions the new tradition created by using early modern performance practices, asking how original-practices theatre is situated and arguing that though the desire to rediscover the past fueled the movement, the productions actually presented are in negotiation with modernity. The dissertation begins by looking at the rhetoric surrounding the original-practices movement, then at the physical aspects of early modern performance recreated for modern stages and the desire for material authenticity. This project also explores the ways in which race and gender play key roles within Shakespearean texts presented on stage, and argues that while gender occasionally has attention called to it, race is nearly always ignored to the point of whitewashing. I argue that because these companies insist on the universality of Shakespeare, they need to examine and deal with the racism and sexism inherent within the plays. Finally, this project explores the influence original-practices productions exerts upon audiences, including aspects such as attendees' expectations, architectural spaces, and performance, and argues that together, these elements lead to a far more cohesive and responsive audience than that which is found at traditional theatre performances. This interactivity and group mentality can lead to thrilling theatre, but can also pose dangers in the form of positive responses to xenophobic, racist, or misogynist elements within the texts, acting as early-modern audiences did and reifying those negative stereotypes and prejudices. While original-practices theatre includes the danger of being something only of historical interest, it also presents opportunities for exciting, progressive theatre that reaches audiences who do not typically go to see Shakespeare or other performances.
ContributorsSteigerwalt, Jennifer L (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Brad (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
"YouTube Shakespeares" is a study of Shakespeare online videos and the people who create, upload, and view them on YouTube. Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this work is a remix of theories and methodologies from literary, performance, (social) media, fan, and Internet studies that expands the field of Shakespeare studies. This dissertation explores the role of YouTube users and their activities, the expansion of literary research methods onto digital media venues, YouTube as site of Shakespeare performance, and YouTube Shakespeares' fan communities. It analyzes a broad array of Shakespeare visual performances including professional and user-generated mashups, remixes, film clips, auditions, and high school performances. A rich avenue for the study of people's viewing and reception of Shakespeare, YouTube tests the (un)limitations of Shakespeare adaptation. This work explores the ethical implications of researching performances that include human subjects, arguing that their presence frequently complicates common concepts of public and private identities. Although YouTube is a "published" forum for social interactivity and video repository, this work urges digital humanities scholars to recognize and honor the human users entailed in the videos not as text, but as human subjects. Shifting the study focus to human subjects demands a revision of research methods and publications protocols as the researcher repositions herself into the role of virtual ethnographer. "YouTube Shakespeares" develops its own ethics-based, online research method, which includes seeking Institutional Board Review approval and online interviews. The second half of the dissertation shifts from methodology to theorizing YouTube Shakespeares' performance spaces as analogs to the interactive and imaginary areas of Shakespeare's early modern theatre. Additionally, this work argues that YouTube Shakespeares' creators and commentators are fans. "YouTube Shakespeares" is one of the first Shakespeare-centric studies to employ fan studies as a critical lens to explore the cultural significance and etiquette of people's online Shakespeare performance activities. The work ends with a conversation about the issues of ephemerality, obsolescence, and concerns about the instability of digital and online materials, noting the risk of evidentiary loss of research materials is far outweighed by a scholarly critical registration of YouTube in the genealogy of Shakespeare performance.
ContributorsFazel, Valerie Margaret (Author) / Thompson, Ayanna (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This dissertation is positioned at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and critical theory in order to explore the way early modern literature may be enlisted as a vehicle for a return to an ethically informed humanism, specifically with regard to how Western culture currently understands the contingent categories of "life" and "the human." While a great deal of critical work is currently being marshaled in the field of biopolitics, scholarly focus continues to be placed on the materiality of the physical body, or what I term "biopolitical materialism."
What remains underexplored, however, is the reality that "life" and "the human" are deeply relational categories that should not be reduced to such material instances alone. Historically, and especially in the early modern period, "life" and "the human" are understood as interconnected and widely networked. Although such materialism indeed becomes solidified in the seventeenth-century, I seek to recuperate an ethical challenge to contemporary biopolitical materialism through an extended dialogue with early modern thinkers. By turning to works "in the Age of Shakespeare" I return attention to the originary epoch of what has been described as our "modern event horizon." I argue that within the very historical period that gives rise to the practice of biopolitical materialism exists a rich textual archive of resistance to this troubling phenomenon in the form of neighborly concern and the acknowledgement of shared creaturely estate.
Chapter One inaugurates my argument by turning to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, reading as its central theme the tragic effect inherent to dissociating the individual from the community. The remaining three chapters attend to neighborly forms given expression in three of Shakespeare's late plays: Chapter Two considers the potential political orientation of grace in Measure for Measure; Chapter Three positions neighborliness as a series of posthuman encounters in The Winter's Tale; and Chapter Four explores an early modern understanding of hospitality as stewardship at work in Timon of Athens. I conclude by turning to philosophy and political theology in order to suggest a way to think "life" as an ethical relation with, in, and through "the Age of Shakespeare."
What remains underexplored, however, is the reality that "life" and "the human" are deeply relational categories that should not be reduced to such material instances alone. Historically, and especially in the early modern period, "life" and "the human" are understood as interconnected and widely networked. Although such materialism indeed becomes solidified in the seventeenth-century, I seek to recuperate an ethical challenge to contemporary biopolitical materialism through an extended dialogue with early modern thinkers. By turning to works "in the Age of Shakespeare" I return attention to the originary epoch of what has been described as our "modern event horizon." I argue that within the very historical period that gives rise to the practice of biopolitical materialism exists a rich textual archive of resistance to this troubling phenomenon in the form of neighborly concern and the acknowledgement of shared creaturely estate.
Chapter One inaugurates my argument by turning to Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, reading as its central theme the tragic effect inherent to dissociating the individual from the community. The remaining three chapters attend to neighborly forms given expression in three of Shakespeare's late plays: Chapter Two considers the potential political orientation of grace in Measure for Measure; Chapter Three positions neighborliness as a series of posthuman encounters in The Winter's Tale; and Chapter Four explores an early modern understanding of hospitality as stewardship at work in Timon of Athens. I conclude by turning to philosophy and political theology in order to suggest a way to think "life" as an ethical relation with, in, and through "the Age of Shakespeare."
ContributorsNoschka, Michael Joseph (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Ayanna (Committee member) / Reynolds, Bryan (Committee member) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
Among the many paradigm shifts brought about in the seventeenth century was an increased dissociation between the subject and time as a lived, shared experience. Clockwork Subjects in the Seventeenth Century: Shakespeare, Herbert, and Milton investigates how changes in the social understanding and experience of time, concurrent with changes in timekeeping technologies, were reflected in the literature of the period. This dissertation is closely concerned with the phenomenon of time from the perspective of the subject and the various ways subjects represent themselves as beings in time. Chapter One provides a theoretical introduction, establishing a Heideggerian framework of temporality and ontology, while emphasizing the characteristics of clock-time as time that is movable and separable from what Heidegger would term “originary time.” Chapter Two analyzes metaphors of hearing in Richard II in relation to the play’s pivotal conceit, in which a dethroned Richard compares himself to broken clockwork; exploring temporality in tandem with the phenomenon of hearing, I argue that aural captivation distorts Richard’s perception of his placement in a larger historical framework. Chapter Three employs a reading of Augustinian time George Herbert’s poems, “Even-song” and “Church-monuments,” analyzing the soul’s experience of time in contrast to temporal metaphors that ask, with Augustine, whether time can be measured by and within the self. Chapter Four, analyzing Milton’s Samson Agonistes, explores Samson’s attempt to act and interpret divine intent while in the middle of history, paralleling early modern efforts to construct an interpretive framework for nature and time.
ContributorsDowner, Jennifer (Author) / Hawkes, David (Thesis advisor) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Fox, Cora (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
Over the course of my undergraduate experience, I have grown significantly as an artist - developing an assortment of strengths in a variety of cinematic disciplines ranging from screenwriting and producing to post-production and cinematography. All the while, I have been giving back to the Sun Devil community by serving in a number of leadership positions around campus which exposed me to a plethora of communities differ from my own. The combination of these experiences allows me to continuously explore new passions in synergy with my art. Two of these standing as the concept of live performance and the work of William Shakespeare. Through this exploration of artistic synergy, I have experimented with integrating the works of the Bard of Avon into the realm of cinema. From the beginning of 2105, I have been drafting a feature-length screenplay which serves as a quasi-prequel to Shakespeare's The Tempest. Under the title of A Kingdom or a Cure, it tells the story of the revolutionary war-hero Miguel Prosperiti as he struggles to save his daughter form a mysterious disease which has baffled the best medical minds while the country he has rebuilt comes crumbling down in post-apocalyptic Italy. Deposed and left to die at the hands of his brother, Miguel must defend his child from the evil witch Sycorax who attempts to kill the pair in order to feed off of their suffering and prolong her own life. Serving to fill the requirements for the Film and Media Production Capstone, A Kingdom or a Cure reimagines the world of Shakespeare's play and creates a new context for the words and actions of its leading characters. Such stands as the foundation of what I have created for what I have created as my applied project - a stylistic re-imagining of William Shakespeare's The Tempest which draws from multiple interpretations of the narrative to be performed as a piece within a larger theatrical presentation staged with only the classical techniques which stand contemporary to the Bard of Avon. The remainder of this document shall lie in six primary sections. The first two establish the project and detail its evolution over the course of the thesis process. Next stands as the production log which chronicles my journey over the Classical and Poetic Drama course as well as the rehearsal process for Mythfest and the Chaucer Festival. Fourth shall consist of a bibliography of all the texts which I have worked with over the course of this thesis experience. Fifth rests A Kingdom or a Cure - the screenplay which inspired me to embark on the grand journey which this thesis has taken me. Sixth shall assume the form of the PowerPoint Presentation which I presented at my thesis defense which contains a collection of images which have provided me with artistic inspiration throughout the thesis process. In conjunction with one another, these pieces serve as the written elements of my applied project.
ContributorsArcaro, Michael Anthony (Author) / Giner, Oscar (Thesis director) / Eckard, Bonnie (Committee member) / WPC Graduate Programs (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
DescriptionA look into the historical significance of clothing and clothing construction to self-fashioning.
ContributorsLee, Elizabeth Kristina (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / TerBeek, Kendra (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
The relationship between a fictional character and its reader is one built on sympathy. Likable characters who combat personal adversity or who possess culturally acceptable and praised characteristics at the time of the fictional work's publication garner compassion from its audience. Does the same kind of reader reaction occur when characters of an unfavorable social status begin to transgress specified cultural attitudes to better themselves? In this paper, I examine the role of three literary characters of illegitimate birth: Mordred in Sir Malory's Le Morte d' Arthur, Edmund in William Shakespeare's King Lear and Jon Snow in George R.R. Martin's A Game of Thrones. I question how negative cultural attitudes at the time of each work's publication affect the way each character conducts himself whether as an agent of assumed social chaos or an autonomous bastard whose actions strive to transcend his undesirable birth rank. Each of these three characters represents specific types of bastards. Both Mordred and Edmund are bastard villains. Mordred's actions are pure unforgiving evil, and his destruction is self-indulgent and justified, to the audience, due to his illegitimate birth. Edmund is more complex, as he emotionally manipulates both the reader and other characters in the play, vacillating between a victimized bastard and a power hungry political player. Jon Snow is least like Mordred and Edmund. He endures the typical Renaissance era social and familial ostracism, and works to separate himself wholly from his illegitimate reputation while subconsciously seeking to prove himself worthy of legitimate respect.
ContributorsHouck, Laura Elizabeth (Author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Corse, Taylor (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2014-05
DescriptionI founded the ASU Shakespeare Club and then directed a production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" set in a contemporary mental institute. This thesis includes the revised script, a journal of the rehearsal process, an introductory essay, and production photos.
ContributorsGallagher, Nicole Marie (Author) / Fox, Cora (Thesis director) / Giner, Oscar (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Queering Shakespeare: The Tragedy of Hamlet and Horatio is a creative project that reimagines Shakespeare's Hamlet. Inspired by my own experiences as a queer teen, the play explores how gender and sexual identities affect the lives of queer youth. Hamlet is reimagined as a polyamorous, transgender man, who is dating a lesbian Ophelia and nonbinary Horatio. The play is told from the perspective of Horatio, who has lived through the tragedy to tell Hamlet's story. They present the events through a compilation of personal videos, filmed from a variety of perspectives. The interactions between the characters of the play showcase the importance of open communication with friends, partners, and family members, while touching on issues of abusive relationships and mental illness. The project aims to foster discussion on the use of Shakespearean adaptation for modern audiences and create more LGBTQ+ representation in media.
ContributorsLindenberg, Jessica Rose (Author) / Himberg, Julia (Thesis director) / Irish, Bradley (Committee member) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
For my thesis I wrote CoriolanU.S., a brand new play based on the storyline of Shakespeare's Coriolanus. It is in modern English and could stand alone as its own work if one was not familiar with the original play. It follows Coriolanus, a police officer who decides to run for mayor after becoming a hero in his city for helping quell a protest. Running against him is Brutus, a white, female neoliberal who represents a seemingly different, but sometimes similar, political side. Coriolanus is meant to be symbolic of the modern day Republican party and show how difficult it can be for people of color to interact with the political scene. The play also features Aufidius, a flawed but determined political activist in the city. The work deals with themes of immigration, over policing, and what people are willing to do to implement their version of a better world. In addition to writing this piece, I also directed and produced a production of it at a local arts collective; the show ran for three nights. I worked with a cast of twelve students for a period of seven weeks. We had rehearsals on the Tempe campus. When casting the play, I had to pay attention to race because many of the roles in my new play are written specifically for people of color. Thus, putting together this thesis involved research not only into adapting Shakespeare's work, but also research into adapting his work for people of color actors and audience. From start to finish, my thesis involved reading Shakespeare, conducting research, writing the play, getting feedback on it and rewriting parts, the rehearsal process of the play, and staging the production.
ContributorsCabral, Angelica (Author) / Sandoval, Mathew (Thesis director) / Ryner, Bradley (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-12