The Lily's Revenge: Staging Love and Community in the Style of the Ridiculous

This written portion of my thesis documents my process as a director in staging Taylor Mac’s play The Lily’s Revenge in collaboration with a creative team of designers, dramaturgs, and performers. I share with the reader my processes toward fostering cohesion and collaboration among a team while wor...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Onopa, Jennifer
Format: Others
Published: ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/682
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1717&context=masters_theses_2
Description
Summary:This written portion of my thesis documents my process as a director in staging Taylor Mac’s play The Lily’s Revenge in collaboration with a creative team of designers, dramaturgs, and performers. I share with the reader my processes toward fostering cohesion and collaboration among a team while working on a complex play that departs from many theatrical conventions. I discuss significant learnings from several areas of dramaturgical and performance research that dovetail within the play: queer performance practice, Theater of the Ridiculous, and Noh theater, and how I used this research to support the communication with my design collaborators to design a show crossing several theatrical genres. I invite readers into the challenges and discoveries of a rehearsal process that required heightened performances from actors and creative solutions for sustaining audience engagement. This thesis includes dramaturgical research, documentation of the rehearsal process, and documentation of audience and performer experiences.