OperA/ALIVE/OperettA

Comprehensive models for organizations must, on the one hand, be able to specify global goals and requirements but, on the other hand, cannot assume that particular actors will always act according to the needs and expectations of the system design. Concepts as organizational rules (Zambonelli 2002), norms and institutions (Dignum and Dignum 2001; Esteva et al. 2002), and social structures (Parunak and Odell 2002) arise from the idea that the effective engineering of organizations needs high-level, actor-independent concepts and abstractions that explicitly define the organization in which agents live (Zambonelli 2002).Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Frontstage Dramaturgy, Backstage Drama: An Ethnographic Study of the Provision of Hotel Accommodation

The provision of service is a growing focus of scholars in the fields of management and organization studies. Yet research in this area continues to reflect the tenets of Weberian bureaucracy with the predominant conceptualization of the provision of service as a “production system” in which customers and the organization’s resources are inputs, and services are the outputs of the organization. Accordingly, the organizing work of managers is conceived as activities that protect the “production system” from input uncertainties and external influences. What is overlooked in this perspective, however, is the dynamic tension between the organizing work of managers and the realities of service encounters. This dissertation expands the current understanding of the provision of accommodation as an example of the provision of service. Based on an ethnographic study of the Front Desk and Housekeeping departments of a large hotel, this dissertation investigates how the realities of encounters between the frontline employees and the customers influence the organizing work of managers. This dissertation takes on a dramaturgical perspective of the provision of accommodation. Building on the idea that the lives of service providers can be understood as resembling actors’ performances on a theatrical stage, this study analyzes the role of managers in (a) setting the stage for the provision of accommodation, (b) defining the roles of service providers, and (c) employing symbols and artifacts that give direction to the service encounters. The findings of this dissertation offer three key insights about the work of managers and the provision of service. First, while managers employ categorizations as rationalized systems of organizing, the meanings, and thus the organizing effects, of categories are related to the employees’ work. Second, managers work at an empirical interface, a point at which the organization meets the vagaries of the real world. Consequently, the work of managers in organizing the provision of service involves manipulating symbols, things, and people. Third, the work of managers comprises both caretaking and transforming the organization. However, caretaking or transforming actions depend on the managers’ daily encounters with the real or the abstract elements of the organization

Overture and Beginners Please! A Call for Performing Arts Metadata at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In August 1947, Scotland hosted its first Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama. Unbeknownst, it simultaneously hosted an uninvited set of eight theatre troupes, whose performances included a staging of Macbeth, alongside Marionette puppet plays. These undeterred artists set into motion what would become the single largest celebration of arts and culture in the world: the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The year 2017 is the Festival’s 70th Anniversary. Yet, little attention has been paid to its documentation and description. The literature suggests that metadata schemas dedicated to performing arts are recent, and none have been explored in the context of the Fringe. This research project conducts a case study of an archival collection entitled Follow the Fringe. It employs qualitative content analysis to explore how well the current metadata schemas modeled for performing arts address the descriptive needs of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Staging Ecologies: The Politics of Theatricality and the Production of Global Ecological Subjectivities

Since the latter decades of the twentieth century, environmental threats posed by global industrialization have become a matter of growing public concern. Increasingly grievances are aired in the streets around the world, and are broadcast in the popular media. However, with the prominence of techno-scientific and ecomanagerial approaches to the ‘ecological crisis’ ecological discourse may be in the process of becoming the new rubric of global governance. Here I engage debates concerning biopolitics and the production of subjectivity, in order to assess the implications of the theatricality of interventions for recasting the terms according to which ecological problematics are approached. I pursue this question: How can theatrics intervene in shaping the political ecology of the future? I begin this thesis by presenting a theory of the politics of theatricality as it applies to the development and reshaping of global ecological politics. In the subsequent chapters, I develop this theory in light of the uses of theatricality in the World Urban Festival, an ‘arts-for-social-change’ festival on the theme of ‘sustainability’ held in Vancouver; an environmental health education program launched in Ecuador with international support; and within local and international activist movements in the aftermath of the Bhopal Gas Leak, widely considered to be the worst industrial disaster of the twentieth century. I argue that while the theatricality of such interventions can promote a particular ecological ethic that minimizes the politics at stake, theatrical interventions can also challenge the de-politicized naturalization of ecological problems. I conclude that the context and nature of relationships staged in and through each event shapes the politics of theatricality, and in turn, the production of global ecological subjectivities. As such, I identify the various challenges and opportunities signalled by this trend toward staging ecologies

Through the intersection of gender, class, and career: a look at the life and legacy of Lucille Lortel

This thesis on the career of Lucille Lortel examines how she was a self-funded, female, Off-Broadway producer who favored political shows and how she navigated obstacles to further her work and establish a legacy. Lortel’s work as a producer helped establish Off-Broadway, introduced many playwrights to the American stage, and provided opportunities for theatre artists. However, her career has not been the focus of much theatre scholarship. Developed through archival research of Lortel’s collection in the New York Public Library, this thesis analyzes how Lortel’s time as an actress shaped her producing career, her navigation of the press’s sexist characterization of her work, and her unique status as a self-funded producer. As a financially independent producer, Lortel supported political shows and artists who were creating under oppressive circumstances. By using the methods silence, ambiguity, and redirection, Lortel avoided discussing political aspects of the theatre she supported, which is examined in a case study of Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods. Lortel established her legacy through methods that supported others in the theatre community, preserved and shared information, and used traditional forms of honors and awards. Some of these efforts included funding new drama at Yale University, working with the Theatre on Film and Tape archive of the New York Public Library, and naming her Off-Broadway theatre after herself. This thesis argues Lortel’s awareness and agency within the decisions she made that shaped her career and deeply impacted American theatre

An Investigation of Core Values in American Not-For-Profit Theatre

This paper will argue that using clearly articulated core values to underpin mission, vision, and all decision-making within a not-for-profit professional theatre will contribute to stability and unity of purpose within the organization. Attention to core values allows the theatre to nimbly react to the needs of the world around it without losing sight of its reason for being. This paper will present the characteristics of clear, compelling core values, discuss when and how values should be identified, and articulate how those values can be utilized in support of programming, funding, hiring, company culture, and marketing. Finally, it will consider how core values can be useful in evaluating success. In concert with a mission and vision, core values provide the organization a clear understanding of its own purpose, and keep the whole company moving in the same direction for the same reason

Staging Charleston: The Spoleto Festival U.S.A.

The Spoleto Festival U.S.A. is a seventeen day international arts festival held annually in Charleston, South Carolina. While the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. perpetuates many of the cultural practices of the hegemonic community of Charleston, it also participates in negotiations of culture on the contemporary global stage. The Festival and the City rely on one another to constitute an identity that is consumable for a tourist and/or festival audience, and this relationship became even more urgent after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Hurricane Hugo serves as a peripeteia of the self-fashioning and self-reflexive narrative shaped by the Charleston elite since the 18th century, and the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. serves as the agent of its denouement. This function of the festival impulse in the contemporary urban setting of Charleston, South Carolina will be the focus of this dissertation, which will examine the relationship between the "placedness" of the historical city and the "placelessness" of the festival atmosphere. This study will identify the features of the festival impulse that engage history, memory, and community and negotiate the territory between "place" and "space". It will compare the historical imaginary of the city with its contemporary identity as an international tourist destination and identify the strategies employed by the festival to destabilize homogenous worldviews and remap the geography of memory in Charleston's past and present

Fast Raising: Digital Fundraising as Interaction Rituals

Twice a year, GamesDoneQuick hosts events that showcase the Speed Running Community, a sub-set of the Video Game Community. Since its inception in 2014 through 2021 GDQ has raised $25.7 million that has been distributed to the Prevent Cancer Foundation and Médecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders). This collection of studies analyzes the Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 event utilizing the Interaction Ritual Theory framework of Randall Collins to understand how ritualistic social action of this community has been leveraged by event organizers to promote successful crowd funding efforts that benefits organizations outside of the community. Further it expands on research into New Social Movements and Participatory Culture to frame and explain the motivations behind this communal process. This study provides evidence to show that interaction ritual chains are present, but failed to accurately identify the specific characteristics of the sacred objects present to link them to the success of rituals. Additionally, it failed to find a link between perceived identity markers of ritual performers with the amount of donations received at the event studied. Lastly, it takes steps to categorize parts of the social action present in the form of donation incentives and describes how those specific incentive types perform in relation to one another

Dramatic License: Histories Of Kenyan Theater, 1895-1964

This dissertation demonstrates how theatrical performances allowed for African political interventions into many of the most significant political moments in Kenya’s colonial history. Though the African majority was largely blocked from participation in the white settler colony’s centralized political institutions, many Africans found roles as musicians, audience members, and even actors within their colonizers’ ubiquitous pastime of amateur theater. By refashioning themselves as performers, disenfranchised people of color reinvented themselves as political actors—arming themselves with the language and ideology of the imperial state and using that language to both participate in and to undermined colonial politics. Bringing expressive culture to bear on Kenyan history, suggests that East African political culture has a dual nature that complicates narratives of collaboration or resistance. The great body of studies published on Kenyan colonial history to this point have given us a rich understanding of both ethno-historical forces and the frameworks of major political tensions. Because Kenya was a deeply divided colony, one in which both African and British ethnic nationalisms demanded central roles, it is easy to be drawn into a fragmented understanding based on historically entrenched cultural difference. The study of theater in this period gives us a more integrated and accurate way to understand the period’s many dynamics, because it shows that Africans, through their expressive culture, all the while moved back and forth across constructed cultural boundaries. They took repressive elements in the colonial armory and undermined them. They played scenes against the apparent grain to find ways for strong political and social self-expression. To reconstruct Kenyan theater as a regional practice, in addition to pursuing official colonial papers and archives in Nairobi, London, and Oxford, I also conducted two years of fieldwork in Kenya. What distinguishes my method of research, is the inclusion of photographs, films, theatrical programs, musical scores, and scripts—archival materials that historians rarely consider. These sources make clear that colonial-era actors were neither sellouts nor transgressors, but cultural interpreters who understood their fast-moving, divisive worlds and used the stage as a middle ground and a mediating voice