UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

Browse

Filters

20221

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Scrimer, Victoria LynnSubject: search.filters.subject.protest

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Beyond Resistance: Performing Postdramatic Protest
    (2022) Scrimer, Victoria Lynn; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    As its point of departure, this dissertation takes stock of the fact that activist performances like sit-ins, marches, banner drops, rallies, and occupations are deeply informed by dramatic theatre in both the way activists design these actions and in the way audiences read them. The dissertation argues that these performative arrangements, narratives, images, and tropes are naturalized to the extent that they have come to constitute a sort of Gramscian common sense that can limit our ability to imagine other ways of thinking and being. The dissertation seeks a conceptual alternative to those limitations. Combining performance analysis, interviews with artists and activists, and autoethnographic accounts of my own experiences as an environmental activist, the dissertation illustrates the limitations of dramatic representation in activist performance and then explores how Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre—theatre that eschews the hallmarks of dramatic theatre—might provide alternative models for activism and new ways to talk about and understand the successes and failures of activist performances as they play out in the 21st century.