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Dr. Eric W. Trumbull, Professor, Theatre/Speech

 

Research Paper Topics

Note: This is a list of possible term paper topics, but you are in no way limited to choosing from among the titles below. Please refer to the links at the end of the list for additional sites that offer possibilities for research.

Actor and player: Richard Burbage and Edward Alleyn

Director and Designer: Kazan and Mielziner's plans for Death of a Salesman

African American Narrative Drama

Bunraku Puppets

Sara Berhardt's Phedre

The Children's Companies of Shakespeare's Day

Max Reinhardt: Director

Picasso's Parade

Blackface: Minstrelsy and negative images of Black Americans

The Roman Ideal: A survey of Renaissance and Baroque Costume

Chinese Opera

Four centuries of Midsummer Night's Dream: Shakespeare, Tieck, Reinhardt, and Peter Brook

Focus on important women in the theatre (e.g. Caroline Neuber, Ellen Franz, Mme. Vestris, Ellen Terry, Eleanora Duse, Sarah Bernhardt, Rachel, Janet Achurch, Stella Adler)

Rangda Barong (or another non-western theatrical ritual)

The Elizabethan shareholder system

How the Chinese acting technique of Mei Lan Fang influenced

Brecht

Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre "Voodoo" Macbeth

Actresses on the Restoration Stage

New Discoveries about The Rose Theatre

Stanislavski and Strasberg compared

The use of historically accurate costumes on stage

The Master Betty phenomenon

Lope de Vega and The Spanish Golden Age

The staging of Fuente Ovejuna

Immanuel Kant and theatre

Theatrical practices of the Bancrofts at the Prince of Wales Epic Theatre's influence on contemporary staging

The Duke of Saxe Meiningen's contribution to theatre art

Robert Edmond Jones - first professional scenographer in America

Adolphe Appia and stage lighting innovations

Developments in stage lighting from candles to candlepower

The Theatrical Syndicate

Focus on an important actor (e.g. Edwin Booth, Kemble, Kean, Henry Irving, Macready, Edwin Forrest, Olivier, Garrick, Macklin, Betterton)

Arlechino: the most famous Zanni

Picasso and stage design

The Theatre Guild

The Federal Theatre

The Group Theatre

The Irish Players

Eugene O'Neill and the Provincetown Players

Erwin Piscator and projected scenery

David Belasco, Theatrical Producer

Artaud's influence on theatre

Josef Svoboda, master scenographer

The Living Theatre

Richard Foreman and the Ontological/Hysterical Theatre

The Wooster Group

Robert Wilson's CiViL WaRs

The Cinema and Theatre

Kabuki

Noh

Performance Art

The Wooster Group

THE 3100 Theatre History -- Fall Semester, 1995 -- University of South Florida, Tampa
Instructor: Dr. Patrick Finelli --
Please send e-mail to finelli@arts.usf.edu-- 5/8/95

and modified by Eric Trumbull, March 16, 2005 .

 


 

PLEASE NOTE:  for all papers you submit for this class (critiques, short papers, extra credit), you MUST include the following information at the top of your paper; include it as part of the text of the paper and not as a header, as this will make it easier for me to mark the document electronically:

Your Name
The Assignment (i.e.: Critique One, Paper Two, etc.)
Date
The semester for which you are registered (i.e.: Fall 2000, Summer 2001, etc.)

This information MUST be included on ALL written assignments.

 

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March 16, 2005