School of Performing Arts - Theses

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    Reframing tradition: renegotiating flamenco dance within contemporary contexts
    Arroquero, Thomas (Tomás) ( 2016)
    ‘Reframing Tradition: Renegotiating Flamenco Dance within Contemporary Contexts’, is a practice-led inquiry undertaken between 2014 – 2016 at the Victorian College of the Arts as a Master of Fine Arts (Dance) by research. There are two parts of the research: a creative performance work and a dissertation. ‘Fragmentos’ (58 min) was performed to a live audience from 9Th – 12Th December 2015 at the Grant Street Theatre, Southbank. A documented record of this event is complementary to this written dissertation. This practice-led research explores first hand the underlying qualities and values within a traditional embodied form and their presence and transformation in contemporary performance settings. Such a process references my individual perspective gained through my experience of dancing flamenco, together with the understanding I have acquired of the theoretical, ideological and historical values embedded in the dance aspect of the form. Alongside this I explore other multidisciplinary approaches to making work that includes foregrounding somatic practice and dramaturgical awareness. By setting up a middle ground where the potential of the transformative process of traditional form to contemporary adaption meet, the creative aspect explores the reflexive relationship and uncovers the latent and the unfulfilled potential of both. The written outcome reviews the convergence of these practices through the practitioner (self), and evaluates the potential of meaning that transpires from it. Coincidently this research has intersected with the impact of my father’s state of decline, diagnosed with the crippling disease of dementia that has ironically energised the essence of these investigations.
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    The breath of empty space: looking for the remnants of God in the ('postmodern') cultural landscape of the secular West in the twenty-first century
    HEALEY, TOM ( 2014)
    The intention behind this research is to conduct a dramaturgical excavation of a specifically curated sample of the medieval English Mystery plays in order to analyse their thematic currency in a contemporary, secular context. This ‘excavation’ is conducted through an original, evolving and dynamic dramaturgical process that I here name ‘re-visioning’, in which the source material – stripped of its historical, cultural and religious context of origin – is re-made using the frame of contemporary (postdramatic) theatre. In their original form, the Mystery plays were a spectacular and comprehensive profession of the Christian (Catholic) faith. I contend that traces of this faith remain embedded into the foundational thinking of contemporary Western liberal democracy and thus that, while the outward dramaturgical shapes of these plays might easily be dismissed as irrelevant, fanciful and naïve in a contemporary context, their inner structures and thematics are intricately and dynamically linked to moral, political and social assumptions which underpin contemporary Western society. The thesis is realised through a combination of theoretical research and theatre practice and is weighted as 55% written dissertation and 45% creative development. The task of the creative development phase was twofold. First, to act as a laboratory in which experiments emanating from the research of scale, duration, image, physicality and performance style could be manipulated and refined; and, second, as a site for a three-dimensional exploration of the potential of stripping, replacing and re-sequencing classical and contemporary dramaturgical constructs. The written dissertation focuses on an analysis of the principles of postdramatic theatre, the ideological/aesthetic aspects of the source material, its cultural and historical context, and the subsequent dismantling of that context with particular reference to Nietzsche and Foucault. It develops a series of dramaturgical principles informed by Nietzschean and Foucauldian perspectives and then examines the outcome of the application of those principles with specific reference to the practice. The application of the theoretical research to the practice resulted in a series of public showings at the School of Performing Arts, VCA (October 2013). The outcome of those showings, in combination with the reflection and the research, led to the conclusion that the ‘dramatic paradigm’ and the Christian paradigm are linked though a common desire for order and pre-determination, qualities thoroughly destabilised by postdramatic practice and the general paradigm of postmodernism.
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    The eye of the storm: an examination of directorial strategies and dramaturgical structures in the creation of a production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt
    Schlusser, Daniel Eugen Bruni ( 2010)
    Daniel Schlusser proposes that his particular style of theatre directing includes three main threads: (1) working with large groups of actors, (2) keeping the whole group present on the stage at all times, and (3) facilitating for the actors a new approach to authenticity – his distinctive version of a contemporary realism. Very specific directing vocabularies and dramaturgical strategies have been developed to deal with the rigorous demands of a complex process. In articulating the current phase of his work, he turns to the theories of French literary critic and philosopher René Girard, specifically his theories of violence as infection, mimetic desire, the scapegoat and the sacrificial crisis. Schlusser examines how these concepts provided a lens through which he could read and understand text, the mechanics of the large group in the rehearsal room and his own directorial impulses. The research question is put thus: how do Girard’s theories concerning violence and group cohesion translate to the theatre stage, and in what ways do they support Schlusser’s directorial aims. Schlusser directed a production of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt with twelve Victorian College of the Arts drama students, four alumni and two child-actors, a professional design team and support from the Victorian College of the Arts Production School. In this production, he utilised and further articulated his process of theatre-directing that has been developed over the last two decades, applying Girardian theories to his reading of the play, his shaping of the rehearsals and to his development of an interpretation that underpinned the final production. In this exegesis, Schlusser unpacks Girard’s concepts of mimetic desire and the sacrificial crisis and traces how they influenced the process of making Peer Gynt. More specifically, he details the process of articulating his three strands of theatre-making mentioned above, and how they work in the rehearsal room. “Bad reading” of the text, casting with mimetic desire in mind, facilitating authentic performing by using props and design in the rehearsal room, the actor’s imperative to operate both inside and outside the fiction, and the director’s role in “applying heat” in the rehearsal room are explored in depth. Schlusser also explains how, using Girard, he developed a dramaturgical strategy termed “storm dramaturgy” in order to work with large groups in which multiple narrative threads, images or events are happening simultaneously in any given moment on the stage. He elucidates the effect that this kind of theatre has on the audience. Schlusser concludes that Girard’s theories became a defining feature of the production, profoundly influencing both the dramaturgical and the narrative structures of the project. He further suggests that Girard’s theories could have wider dramaturgical applications.