1,720,983 research outputs found
Patterns and Possibilities: The Brain, Imagination, and Creative Practice
Get PDFThis thesis investigates a set of theoretical principles concerning the imagination as cognitive function, based on scientific readings in neuroscience, cognitive science, and neurobiology, as well as experiential observations of creative practice pedagogy drawn from theatre training methods employed to develop the practice of creating original work for the theatre. Key to my investigation is acknowledging that the imagination is a function of the brain. Imaginative brain function is defined as an autonomous systemic, interconnected brain system capable of activating to produce specific outcomes enabling the human organism’s fitness for purpose. I contend that there are two interconnecting facets of imaginative functioning referred to as the biological imagination and the existential imagination, both active on a conscious and non-conscious level. From the first facet I focus on one aspect of biological imagining, which I refer to as the tactile imagination. The tactile imagination is that aspect of imaginative brain function associated with the sense of touch, at all levels of experience, here employed to stimulate the generation of original material for a style of performance known as physical theatre. In addition, I argue that creating, as an outcome, is trainable. While each creation engages in its own specific processes, I contend that there are practices common to creating in general. In this thesis I demonstrate that, at its source in the imagination as brain function, there may be certain processes common to most creative endeavors. This embodied analysis posits three imaginative processes – the provision of possibilities, the development of associative patterns, and image composition. Specific connections are posited with memory, emotion, and the senses, in support of embodied theatrical composition, involving a three-stage experiential process of identification, transference, and transformation. This embodied creative process, also engages the existential imagination, associated with consciousness and a sense of self. The engagement of the existential imagination in creative practice is initiated by an altered perceptual state, a cognitive reversal in which conscious cognition supports the imaginative process, initiating discovery and invention. I conclude, that there is experiential and scientific evidence to support a dynamic relationship between this three-function imaginative process and my three-stage creative process, opening up opportunities to develop more comprehensive training techniques for creative practice
The Ride: Equine Influence and Inter-species Performance
No full textThe question of animals and performance defines the crossroads of the academic fields of Critical Animals Studies and Performance Studies, giving rise to the proposition of inter-species performance. But are all performances that integrate animals into the production inter-species? Or are there different manners of collaboration? In 2008 and my horse, Katrina, and I rode across Canada. Though this event was not undertaken as a performance endeavour, the production that emerged can be understood as a uniquely collaborative human/equine performance – The Ride. The Ride presented a meeting through the middle of an inter-species partnership that was performance in its foundation of physical communication and learned cooperation between a human and a horse. The Ride was an event that “became” a performance due to its active, reciprocal human/equine exchange, and the experiential interaction of a host of audience/participators throughout the course of the journey. Through embracing the positive, expansive qualities of equine alterity, and recognizing both the human and equine perspectives at play within the event, The Ride presented a performance that was fundamentally inter-species
Searching for the Muse: Changing Inspiration
No full textThe word muse or Muse has become synonymous with an artist’s "inspiration." It's a somewhat old-fashioned notion that has changed over time, but it prevails in describing a kind of "divine intervention" for artists. But what does it mean when we refer to an actress as a playwright's muse? The composition of a play is largely the solitary world of the playwright, but the presentation of that play through live performance is a collaborative event. By using my own long-term working relationship (and friendship) as an actress with Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor as a case study, I examine the validity of the concept of a "muse" with regard to the playwright/actor relationship. The ephemeral nature of live theatre dictates that the word be redefined to incorporate the reciprocal energy that flows between the playwright and the actor in the creation of a "character."Canada Council for the ArtsACTRA Fraternal Benefit SocietyUniversity of Guelp
Maple Syrup Gore: From Sexploitation to Canuxploitation (Representations of Gender in the Canadian Horror Film)
Get PDFThis thesis is an investigation of five Canadian genre films with female leads from the Tax Shelter era: The Pyx, Cannibal Girls, Black Christmas, Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS, and Death Weekend. It considers the complex space women occupy in the horror genre and explores if there are stylistic cultural differences in how gender is represented in Canadian horror. In examining variations in Canadian horror from other popular trends in horror cinema the thesis questions how normality is presented and wishes to differentiate Canuxploitation by defining who the threat is.Black Fawn Distributio
The Evolution of Mediatized Stand-Up Comedy: Investigating Para-Performances on Television, Film, and YouTube
No full textAlthough the majority of today’s performances are accessible on multiple platforms, performance analysis often continues to focus on the live event or to discuss the recorded event as if it were live. This thesis explores the influence of various mediatizations on a performance form. In order to better understand changes in power, control, and authority that are produced on differing mediums, it develops a form of analysis that views the performance event as comprised of two aspects. It argues that a performance event is comprised of the performance proper, which is a performance that is identifiable as being for entertainment purposes, and the para-performance, which arises due to the intention and/or execution of the performance proper. For example, the performance text of a theatrical work is the performance proper whereas the audience’s reactions, the architecture of the performance space, and the promotional materials and reviews are part of the para-performance. A para-performance analysis thus reads both the performance proper and the paraperformance “as” performance. This thesis is an investigation of the process of adapting live performance to media platforms. That process, referred to as mediatization, is explored through the evolution of contemporary stand-up comedy in Anglophone North America. Specifically, the dissertation focuses on the development of the content, form, and audiences of contemporary stand-up comedy across live, televised, filmic (i.e. VHS, DVD, and Netflix), and YouTube mediatizations of the performance form. Moreover, a performance analysis approach to the objects of study is used to understand the relationship between power and platform. The dissertation examines how marginalized performers negotiate power through their para-performances and performances. Analysis of the objects of study reveals that manipulating elements of the para-performance can align performers with power and invest their voices with authority. The dissertation demonstrates that media platforms that offer performers control over various para-performance elements, access to accidental audiences, and positions alongside those in power provide the performer with the greatest opportunity to challenge dominant ideologies and positively reconfigure existing hegemonic structures
Maple Keys
No full textMaple Keys is a play inspired by events surrounding the Robert Pickton case in Vancouver. The play begins with the disappearance of Helen, a sex worker in Vancouver's East End and her daughter Maple’s consequent move to rural Ontario to live with her grandmother and uncle. The play's setting is the farming community of Listowel, Ontario, with flashbacks to Maple’s life in Vancouver. The Listowel area is an apt setting for striking a balance between urban and rural life, allowing Maple to experience feelings of displacement and culture shock. The play's form takes shape through Maple's journey as she addresses the audience directly, and deals with her encounters with the people she must now call family.2999-01-0
Communicating in Silence: (Re)balancing Human/Animal Dynamics through Performance
Get PDFAnimals have come to find themselves in a subordinate position in their encounters with humans in dominant culture. Their perspectives are rarely recognized, and when they are acknowledged it is often only in a limited sense, a sense that only allows the given animal certain elements of self and perspective (and often only the elements that most directly benefit the human). Animals are expected to serve humans in a variety of manners, even when those animals are considered our partners and family. We (humans) have placed animals in these positions by forgetting (or never knowing) how to hear their stories and recognize their agency. A significant step towards redressing these relationships is to learn to “hear” and engage with the nonverbal speaking of animals, and to recognize their perspectives and work to understand them. For this to occur, humans need to be able to understand the ways that meaning is made without words through relationship, to recognize how the expressive action of performance “speaks” in interspecies contexts. For the purposes of this study I am focusing my discussion on the exchange and potential of human/equine relationships, and on how meaning is co-created between species in this culturally specific context. The first chapter sets up the historical, theoretical, and scholarly contexts in which this work, on human/equine engagement and the performance of communication, is being positioned. The second chapter explores the ways that interspecies communication is predominantly discussed and understood in the equestrian community through looking at the methodologies of Natural Horsemanship and Equine-Facilitated Learning. The third chapter focuses on performance analysis to gain insights into the work of France’s Théâtre Zingaro and Canada’s Cavalia, drawing together all of the previous chapters’ discussions of language, performance, communication and agency, to explore how horses are made to mean on stage. The fourth chapter delves into the potential of improvisational performance for collaborating across difference in interspecies contexts. This chapter focuses on the practice-based research project Playing in Silence, which invites musicians to improvise with horses in an open and unstructured space.International Institute for Critical Studies in ImprovisationOntario Graduate ScholarshipUniversity of Guelp
Creating the Canadian Stage Company: An analysis of the merger of Toronto Free Theatre and CentreStage Company
No full textThis thesis analyses and historicizes the dominant economic and cultural forces, and corporate and personal dispositions, that propelled Toronto Free Theatre and CentreStage Company towards their strategic merger and foundation of the Canadian Stage Company. Based in the field of cultural production, the study is influenced by the analytical tools of Pierre Bourdieu, and concentrates on the companies' mutual dispositions of cultural and economic growth acting as the driving force behind the creation of Canadian Stage. The mutual struggles, strategies and ideologies of Toronto Free and CentreStage are explored in relation to the establishment of mandates, artistic and corporate leaders and structures. These work to unify their dissimilar cultures with the goal of creating the major Canadian non-profit theatre company. Also examined is the role of the board of directors, who consolidated cultural hegemony and acculturation of corporate over artistic cultures through the forced completion of the integration process
Authored Agency: Exploring the Language and Grammar of Video Games
No full textThis thesis is an examination of narrative structure of single-player story-driven video games, shifting the focus toward the exploration of their design and methods by which game designers and authors are able to use the language of interactivity in order to convey meaning to a video game player. Although the role of the player is important in examining video game narratives, it is only recently that scholars and critics have begun to examine the role that the game designer has in creating the conditions that allow for meaning to be created in the first place. This thesis examines the narrative structure of video games by exploring the major attempts to define a language of video games and using this criticism to suggest a greater shift toward considering how many moments of interactivity are purposefully designed in order to encourage a specific interpretation of the game’s narrative. The thesis surveys a significant number of video games to help illustrate how player interactivity is specifically authored and uses this survey to provide context for a more in depth discussion of major single-player story-driven video games released in the last few years. This thesis concludes that a new framework for studying narratives in video games and authoring video game narratives is needed, suggesting that moments of carefully controlled interactivity are the building blocks of the language of video games
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