Renaissance Drama on the Purdue University Stage
Abstract
“Renaissance Drama on the Purdue University Stage” challenges the widespread assumption that university student-performed Renaissance drama is inferior to, and therefore less valuable than, its professional and community theatre counterparts. Such an assumption was most recently reinforced by Michael Dobson’s Shakespeare and Amateur Performance, which, in its attempt to chart “the contexts and styles in which people who are not theatrical professionals have chosen to perform Shakespeare’s plays,” consciously omitted all “school productions” (1, 20). My dissertation challenges this assumption by highlighting four different models of student-performed Renaissance drama on display at Purdue University and examining the different types of value—including scholarly, social, vocational, and pedagogical—imbued within each production. Case studies include a 1951 production of Macbeth staged by the extracurricular performance group Purdue Playshop (Chapter 2); a site-specific 2015 production of Twelfth Night sponsored by the Department of Theatre (Chapter 3); a self-administered 2013 production of William Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin mounted by the interdepartmental performance troupe The MARS Players in Kalamazoo, Michigan (Chapter 4); and a research-based 2015 production of Robert Wilson’s The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London, originally performed at Purdue University before traveling to Canada to participate in the Festival of Early Drama 2015 at the University of Toronto (Chapter 5).
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Ross, Purdue University.
Subject Area
British and Irish literature|Theater
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