http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/topic/48/theatre Inquiries Journal provides undergraduate and graduate students around the world a platform for the wide dissemination of academic work over a range of core disciplines. en-us Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:08:11 -0400 Sat, 18 Apr 2026 02:08:11 -0400 http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1819/stage-as-moment-cinema-as-memory-the-diverging-aesthetics-of-two-mediums By Abigail Tulenko - This paper argues that film is a medium defined by its relationship to memory. Building upon aesthetician György Lukács's temporal theory of cinema, I contrast film's inherent relationship to memory with the “eternal present” of the stage. Audiences viewing a film have a continual awareness that what they watch on screen was filmed in the past and edited together retrospectively. Cinema replicates the selective encoding process of our memories on-screen when a director and editor piece together the shots and scenes that compose a completed film. Often there is a large amount... Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:26 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1819/stage-as-moment-cinema-as-memory-the-diverging-aesthetics-of-two-mediums http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1749/class-gender-and-the-anxieties-of-meritocracy-in-jacobean-england By Joshua B. Black - The staged plays of the early Jacobean period are valuable textual products for the literary critic, the cultural researcher and the historian alike. These plays are significant containers of knowledge about the mutually reinforcing social and political tensions of the early years of King James I’s reign. There is a body of literature which presently deals with questions about the complex class and gender politics of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614): Frank Whigham concluded that the ‘play was written, at least in significant part, to dissect the actual workings of the... Tue, 08 Jan 2019 09:46 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1749/class-gender-and-the-anxieties-of-meritocracy-in-jacobean-england http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1710/come-sir-boy-subverting-masculinity-through-cross-gender-performance By Rachel Chung - I was the wounded soldier in the opening scene of Macbeth, lying spread-eagled on the stage, flaunting my unsightly gashes. I closed my legs self-consciously. Even portraying a hyper-masculine character, I found myself subject to the parameters of feminine performance. Later in the same production, I gave what was, for high school, a raunchy and riotous performance as the Porter. I referenced what would be my male genitalia, indicating what would be a beer belly, leaning heavily into the masculinity of the scene. I found the humor not just in the words themselves, but in the fact that they were... Thu, 30 Nov 2017 10:49 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1710/come-sir-boy-subverting-masculinity-through-cross-gender-performance http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1545/a-16th-century-ovid-the-influence-of-classical-mythology-on-the-understanding-of-shakespeares-plays By Emily Gray - Commonly believed to be the single greatest writer and poet of the English language, as well as one of the most distinguished and esteemed dramatists in the entire world, William Shakespeare is credited with authoring approximately 38 works of theatre, 154 sonnets, two lengthy narrative poems, and several additional pieces of verse. While there exists some question concerning the authenticity of authorship of several of these dramatic works, scholars have determined that 32 of the 38 plays can unquestionably be attributed to Shakespeare (Root 119-132). With the majority of the writing of his known... Mon, 27 Feb 2017 05:47 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1545/a-16th-century-ovid-the-influence-of-classical-mythology-on-the-understanding-of-shakespeares-plays http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1520/the-role-of-deception-in-love-as-portrayed-in-shakespeares-a-midsummer-nights-dream-and-twelfth-night By Emily Gray - Primarily concerned with love in the form of “the love of persons,” Shakespeare’s literature examines and scrutinizes several varying types of relationships stemming from different facets of a singular emotion (Nordlund 21). By focusing solely on this branch of love, Shakespeare is able to incorporate a plethora of illustrations throughout both his comedies and sonnets of parental love, sibling love, romantic love, and variations on the classical idea of phileo, or friendship love, while excluding such unrelated phenomena of affection as the love of material goods or the love... Wed, 18 Jan 2017 12:47 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1520/the-role-of-deception-in-love-as-portrayed-in-shakespeares-a-midsummer-nights-dream-and-twelfth-night http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1496/the-role-of-minor-and-ephemeral-characters-in-shakespeares-henry-v By Muhammad Suffian - Henry V is an unusual play in the sense that it is centred on one major personality. Therefore, the play often has to rely on the dramatic effect of its minor and ephemeral characters. These characters are extraordinarily compelling and their importance cannot be exaggerated; they provide critical perspective of the King, and his interactions with them are designed to undercut and comprise the heroic perception of his character. (Erickson, 1979, pg. 14). Thus, the aim of this paper is to demonstrate and critically analyse the salient role minor characters play in deflating the heroic myth of Shakespeare... Tue, 15 Nov 2016 10:17 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1496/the-role-of-minor-and-ephemeral-characters-in-shakespeares-henry-v http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1467/intersections-of-gender-race-and-nation-in-cloud-nine-and-m-butterfly By Miriam Cummins - This article contributes to the debate as to whether Cloud Nine by Caryl Churchill and M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang are ultimately essentialist or anti-essentialist, accentuating or disavowing difference. It argues that both plays are successfully anti-essentialist by examining the discursive relationship between categories of gendered, racial and national identity. For both Churchill and Hwang, categories of gender, race and nation can be mutually deconstructed in the same way that they are mutually constructed because their foundation in discourse is fundamentally unstable. Thus, when fluid... Tue, 25 Oct 2016 09:56 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1467/intersections-of-gender-race-and-nation-in-cloud-nine-and-m-butterfly http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1058/the-process-of-unity-in-virginia-woolfs-between-the-acts By Hayley E. Tartell - In Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, Woolf raises the theme of a progression toward social unification. Through her analysis of repetition, milieu, and the audience’s shared state of distractedness, Woolf enriches her text by emphasizing process rather over outcome. Woolf’s text aligns with Kant’s notion of universal communicability and implies that the process transcends the effect of unity itself. By highlighting the potential for unity, rather than the actual achievement of unity itself, Woolf intimates that this unfixed process allows for the possibility of a stable... Thu, 23 Jul 2015 08:22 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1058/the-process-of-unity-in-virginia-woolfs-between-the-acts http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/653/food-love-and-death-in-normans-night-mother By Megan P. Kaplon - Marsha Norman’s 1983 play‘night Mother is full of food imagery and references. From the opening stage directions to Jessie’s constant kitchen chores, food is intertwined in every moment of the play. Norman’s food references serve to show what is missing in the lives of Jessie and her mother Thelma and the ways they fill these holes with food. Jessie and Thelma have different strategies for this substitution, one creating through consumption, the other through preparation, but with close analysis through the lens of food advertising and psychological associations with food... Sun, 17 Jun 2012 06:29 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/653/food-love-and-death-in-normans-night-mother http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/357/the-n-word-the-use-and-development-of-the-term-nigger-in-african-american-culture-as-depicted-in-the-plays-of-august-wilson By Stephanie C. Grogan - August Wilson represents the experiences of African-Americans in each decade of the 20th century in his Pittsburgh Cycle, a collection of ten plays. Throughout this canon, language is used not just as an important form of communication amongst the characters, but also as a means of communicating the African-American experience and its changes across the decades of the 20th century. Because the language of August Wilson’s plays is representative of both African-American culture and American cultural shifts, the plays contain rhetorical and linguistic choices that are specific to... Mon, 10 Jan 2011 09:05 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/357/the-n-word-the-use-and-development-of-the-term-nigger-in-african-american-culture-as-depicted-in-the-plays-of-august-wilson http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/332/freudian-theories-present-in-lerouxs-the-phantom-of-the-opera By Jeremy S. Page - Contemporary adaptations of The Phantom engage with several key Freudian concepts in order to explain and justify the development and motivation of the protagonist. These concepts, while present in Leroux’s original text, have been extended and emphasised by these post-Freudian adaptations. Freud’s integration as part of contemporary popular culture allows these modern texts to make psychoanalytical assumptions about the characters in the text. For the purposes of this analysis, this essay is focused on two key Freudian ideas which are found in the... Tue, 30 Nov 2010 09:36 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/332/freudian-theories-present-in-lerouxs-the-phantom-of-the-opera http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1680/nora-as-a-doll-in-henrik-ibsens-a-dolls-house By Michael C. Wiseman - Until her change, Nora is very childlike and whimsical. Her first act on stage is her paying the delivery body. Though his service only costs 50-p., she gives him a hundred. Though an additional 50-p. is not a significant amount of money, the casual way in which she gives it to him is indicative of her fiscal irresponsibility (Cummings). She hands him the hundred and before he can thank her, she decides in the middle of the transaction that she is not patient enough to wait for change. The fact that this seemingly mundane occurrence is presented as the first action on stage showcases the reckless... Wed, 31 Mar 2010 08:50 EDT http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1680/nora-as-a-doll-in-henrik-ibsens-a-dolls-house http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/105/ovids-metamorphoses-and-the-plays-of-shakespeare By Katherine Blakeney - Publius Ovidius Naso (43 B.C – 17 A.D.), a Roman aristocrat and poet, wrote a collection of poems based on Greek and Roman mythology. Ovid called it “Metamorphoses” as he selected myths that dealt with the transformation of people, gods, and heroes into forces or features of nature. Metamorphoses became one of the most popular and influential literary works in the history of European civilization. Shakespeare must have read Ovid in Latin, as Metamorphoses was part of his school program. There is also a Latin copy of Metamorphoses with Shakespeare’s signature on it, but... Thu, 31 Dec 2009 09:35 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/105/ovids-metamorphoses-and-the-plays-of-shakespeare http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/101/the-development-of-theatre-peter-brook-and-the-human-connection By Sawyer A. Theriault - Brook defines the human connection through many different mediums, one of which is directing. He claim's “the supreme jujitsu” style of directing “would be for the director to stimulate such an outpouring of the actor's inner richness that it completely transforms the subjective nature of his original impulse”(Brook, 61). What he is describing is non-directional directing. In order for the actor to authentically feel what his character is intended to feel, he must discover those emotions on his own, without the director telling him what they are. The director's job is then... Thu, 24 Dec 2009 11:41 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/101/the-development-of-theatre-peter-brook-and-the-human-connection http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/36/absurdism-in-post-modern-art-examining-the-interplay-between-waiting-for-godot-and-extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close By Elizabeth L. Bolick - Post-modern art is permeated by Absurdism. The Post-World War II Absurdist movement centered on the idea that life is irrational, illogical, incongruous, and without reason (Esslin xix). The ‘Theater of the Absurd’, named by theater critic Martin Esslin in his 1961 work,  was popularized by Samuel Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, Absurdist playwrights, Eugene Ionesco and Arthur Adamov. Political turmoil, scientific breakthrough and social upheaval shaped the cultural context of their works. Absurdist playwrights commented on the decline of moral character that the rise... Thu, 05 Nov 2009 05:00 EST http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/36/absurdism-in-post-modern-art-examining-the-interplay-between-waiting-for-godot-and-extremely-loud-and-incredibly-close