This dissertation analyzes theater performances that use narratives of U.S. military veterans in the post 9/11 era in order to cross the military-civilian divide. Engaging theories of performance, embodiment, and affect, this project investigates the depiction of military bodies onstage, the public perception of military identities, and the lived experience...
Circling the Cosmograms marks the first full-length study of second-generation feminist and/or queer art and performance in the Haitian Dyaspora (Haitian Kreyòl spelling) following the January 12, 2010 earthquake in Haiti. Through archival research, visual and performance art analysis, and in-depth interviews, I document the ways feminist and/or queer Haitian-American...
This study examines contemporary theatrical, filmic, and pictorial representations of Heinrich von Kleist's 1807 novella, "The Marquise of O--." It particularly focuses on the development of a solo music theatre production by a team of German/American, independent theatre artists, of which I was one, in the auditorium of the German...
A number of new satiric forms -- or emergent genres -- have exploded in popularity almost simultaneously in recent years, all markedly political, all incorporating the real into the mimetic in striking ways, and all straddling the line between satire and serious political dialogue. This dissertation focuses on three of...
This dissertation deploys an interdisciplinary methodology, extending what is conventionally understood as discourse to include performance. It brings together the fields of performance studies, discourse analysis and theatre studies to document, contextualize, and analyze the events after the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992. It examines gang youth who turned to...
This dissertation project explores the relationship between the architectures of black masculinity in America and a specific performance of discreet sexual identity. Through critical ethnographic and discursive exploration, I look closely at a group of black men who describe themselves as being on the "down low" (DL). These men, who...
My study examines three participatory learning environments in which computer-based tools and improvisational training techniques comprise innovative approaches to teaching performance studies to undergraduate students. For my analysis, I have selected to focus on two classes and one production project. I contend that performance, an interdisciplinary and collaborative art form,...
This dissertation articulates the practice of clown theater by a Chicago-based company called 500 Clown in order to provoke further investigation and definition of this hybrid theatrical form, which, though increasingly popular as a practice, has yet to be theorized or historicized. This study addresses clown theater's relationships with other...
This dissertation combines critical ethnography, critical performance and historical analysis to examine three Trinidadian dance companies - Malick Folk Performing Company, Shiv Shakti Dance Company, and Noble Douglas Dance Company Inc. - asking how each choreographs Trinidadian discourses of race/ethnicity, class and national belonging through its own uniquely crafted embodied...
Initiation is a performative model that dictates the participation of individuals in the various traditions of Western occultism, locating that individual within a nexus of practices and discourses that facilitate the transmission of occult teachings to that individual. While the act of initiation may be represented by a single performed...