Presenter(s): Rachel Cooper
Co Presenter(s): Max Daniels, Alexander Fix, Brian Janisch, Cassidy Malick, Giulia Sala, Zoe Wassman
Faculty Mentor(s): Aryn Bartley
Poster 85-86
Session: Social Sciences & Humanities
Our purpose in this creative project was to explore themes from Lane Community College’s spring 2019 production of The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe through the medium of a lobby presentation informed by dramaturgical principles. Dramaturgy is the study and exploration of theatrical elements not explicitly stated in the playwright’s literal text, such as cultural allusions and performance history. A lobby presentation is a practical application of dramaturgical studies and is used to prime the audience for a play before they enter the theater. We performed an in- depth analysis of the text and its context, synthesizing our findings into a multimodal (visual, aural, and linguistic) display that represented the play’s larger themes, such as feminism, sports as community, and U.S. teen girl culture. Our process was to choose which elements to emphasize without compromising the playwright’s vision. We decided to highlight the juxtaposition between the daily aspects of U.S. teen girl culture with the far larger international dilemmas discussed in the text, and the indirect influence they have upon each other. Our presentation illuminates the way the lobby can establish an overall tone as well as a connection between the audience and the world of the play.