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    1:1 : (manifestoes for a theatre of matter) : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of Masters in Design at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2005) Trubridge, Sam
    This thesis revisits the manifestos of Twentieth Century theatre makers in order to establish a manifesto for performance design in the Twenty-First Century. It proposes that a material theatre is necessary in order to re-sensitise its audience and counter the 'de-realisation' that has infected and desensitised popular notions of war and global trauma. At the beginning of this new century there are new crises to mirror those that Antonin Artaud, Tadeusz Kantor, Peter Brook, and Jerzy Grotowski responded to in their own theatre and writings. With reference to the work of these artists this manifesto will construct an argument and rationale for 'The Theatre of Matter': a visual and spatial language for performance that affirms and implicates the material bodies of audience, performer, and space. By this design performance can become a complicit setting: the place of cruelty, ritual, realisation, and restoration that Helene Cixous calls "the place of crime and place of pardon" (Drain, 1995, p.340). Research through two realised productions of 'The Restaurant of Many Orders', reflection upon these productions, and conceptual drawings will make it possible to challenge and review the manifesto; thus setting it into motion within a practical framework.
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    What are the theatrical considerations in writing a play which broadens the debate around transgender issues? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2014) Gilbert, Robert James
    Against a backdrop of derision and ridicule, transgender characters have been poorly represented in theatre throughout history. After lengthy interviews with two transgender subjects, consideration is given to theatrical form, narrative, and metaphor in the creation of a new stage play that explores transgender issues in contemporary society. Trans Tasmin counters the historical discrimination of transgender representation by placing the transgender characters as credible protagonists. By considering transgender representation in New Zealand plays, and examining models of socio-political plays, the debate around transgender issues is broadened beyond the realm of pantomime and grotesquery. Trans Tasmin removes transgender characters from ‘theatre-of-ridicule’ and relocates them to ‘theatre-ofacceptance’.
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    Staging phantasmagoria : the uncanny play of live and mediatized performance : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a degree of Masters in Design at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2006) Brettell, Andrew
    Multimedia designers working in the theatre often produce work that fails to recognize the fundamentally different spatiotemporal vocabularies of live performance and the moving image, and how they can be productively utilised to enhance theatre's inherent virtuality. This thesis argues that instead of mixing or hiding the differences between the virtual and the physical in theatre, performance design can 'play' with the two languages to produce an uncanny experience that re-establishes the strangeness of phantasmagoria' - technologies of vision that project ghostly doubles. In consumer culture, disembodied images screened by contemporary phantasmagoria such as television, cinema and the computer interface, habitually engage the spectator in a process of identification and disavowal. Integrating live performance and the mediatized image has the potential to change the spectator's response to these images. When the live performer is confronted with his or her mediatized double, the dissonance between presence and absence, materiality and immateriality, animate and inanimate is marked by disconcerting logic' and 'doubt' rather than identification and disavowal. This doubt opens up ambiguities in the spectator's preconceptions about self-identity, and particularly the belief that the phantasmatic body image is simply an immaterial copy of the body. Instead, the relationship between the body and its image becomes indeterminate and reversible, actual and virtual. Embodied research was employed to develop this hypothesis, through three site-specific performance installations. Theatre Ghosts (September, 2006, Circa Theatre). Ghost Runner [November, 2006, Wellington), and Futuna (December, 2006, Chapel of Futuna), that tested the potential dissonance between the projected image and the performing body in order to provoke uncanny spatiotemporal experiences. These experiments, presented through conceptual drawings, still and moving images, are used as vehicles to consider how the ambiguous clash between live and mediated performance suggests new ways of extending the performing body, its phantasmatic double and spaces of inhabitation.
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    What are the terms needed to create a theatre play about the legendary Manawatu outlaw Joseph Pawelka that will universalise his story and make it relevant for a contemporary audience? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Creative Writing in English at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Markwell, Carol Ann
    I have always been intrigued by the story of the Manawatu outlaw and ‘Man Alone’ folk hero Joseph Pawelka. In planning this thesis I had two objectives. My first was to test the possibility that I could write a play centred on a historical figure such as Pawelka that would be both mythic and resonant for a modern audience. My second objective was to analyse and reflect upon the entire process of researching and writing this play. My research for the play, Smoke and Mirrors, has been both literary and historical. In order to write with depth and accuracy I needed to research Joseph Pawelka’s life and times and my thesis essay has given an overview and an analysis of my findings. These were taken from books, folk memory, newspapers of the day, files in National Archives, and also from later secondary sources. In literary terms, the thesis has charted the artistic and theatrical choices I made as I developed the play, Smoke and Mirrors, into a work of non-naturalistic theatre. As part of my literary research I explored three plays written in similarly non-naturalistic style – Frank Wedekind’s two (combined) Lulu plays, Bertolt Brecht’s opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and Mervyn Thompson’s Children of the Poor. The finished version of my play Smoke and Mirrors contains theatrical elements and techniques taken from each of these three plays, and the thesis has recorded this process. The thesis has also included an account of the first production of Smoke and Mirrors in October 2012 in Palmerston North and an overview of the various strengths and weaknesses of the play in performance.
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    An intimate spectacle : dispersing the theatre : an essay presented in partial fulfillment of the degree of Master of Design, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Burrell, Sarah
    An Intimate Spectacle examines the intersection between the spectacle of the theatrical event and the subjective experience of the audience member or ‘participant’. Departing from the dynamics of spectatorship prescribed by the traditional theatre, this exploration begins to wander through the rough and surprising terrain of the city in search of an intimate form of participation. This body of work has been explored and disseminated through a series of urban workshops and performances in which a solitary participant is guided on a self-directed exploration of the city. Equipped with sound (mp3 players) and material (objects and suggestions) the individuals are invited to conduct interventions that cause them to perform a personal relationship with their urban surroundings. Participants become tourists of the everyday, dispersing traces of performance that reveal a mythic dimension in the habitual city. Theatre is typified by binary distinctions: the stage and the auditorium, the fictional and the real, the prop and the object, and the actor and the audience. As this discourse moves outside the theatre, these distinctions begin to dissolve. The roles of the actor and the audience are disestablished through the design of performances comprised solely of participants who conduct their experience through interventions and enactments.