DOI
https://doi.org/10.25772/56EN-NB78
Defense Date
2009
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Fine Arts
Department
Theatre
First Advisor
Noreen C. Barnes
Abstract
My thesis will explore the role of the female director. The two plays on which I will focus, Neil LaBute’s medea redux and Frank McGuinness’s Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me, call for quite different casts. The former involves a woman in a police interrogation room; the latter involves three men in a Lebanese prison. Despite the overt masculinity of these plays, traces of femininity permeate. Indeed, my status as a female director provided one of the clearest paths into these plays when I directed them last year at Virginia Commonwealth University. My gender also greatly influenced my direction of the actors. My experiences working on these shows provided a backdrop from which to reflect on my role as a female director in a male-dominated field. In my thesis I will reference notes I took during the rehearsal process. I will also include much of my dramaturgical research. Finally, throughout my writing process, I will attempt to define “masculine” and “feminine” both with regard to theatre and to theatre direction. This document was created in Microsoft Word 2003 for Mac.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
May 2009