Layer Cake: Post-Cinematic Aesthetics and the “Social Justice Impulse” in Kaneza Schaal's Jack &

<p>Kaneza Schaal is a New York City-based theater artist who consistently utilizes a collaborative and hybrid approach to performance making, privileging demographic diversity alongside formal diversity. Drawing on intermedial performance discourse, early television scholarship, and social practice theory, I argue that Schaal’s citation of 1950s sitcom aesthetics in her 2018 theatrical work <em>Jack &</em> self-consciously stages a critique of the cultural hegemony that structured twentieth century television in order to contest the contemporary US media-incarceration nexus.</p> <p>As a critical second layer to my analysis, I look at the ways Schaal utilizes the tools of the avant- garde (intermediality, collaboration and postmodern deconstruction) to articulate and aestheticize the social justice aims of her project (community outreach, racial justice, and criminal justice reform).</p> <p>Drawing on Piotr Woycicki's concept of post-cinematic performance, I explore Schaal’s deconstruction of sitcom aesthetics within live theater. My research addresses the gap left in Woycicki’s study in regards to those post-cinematic works that source twentieth century television (instead of film), as well as the broader dearth of scholarship on the impact of network television in contemporary performance and theater.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Film Studies

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Power, Amber M.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kelli Fuery, Ph.D., Chair
• Leah Aldridge, Ph.D.
• Micol Hebron, MFA
• Ian Barnard, Ph.D.

• Kaneza Schaal
• intermedial performance
• post-cinematic aesthetics
• art and social justice
• media-incarceration complex
• Film and Media Studies
• Other Theatre and Performance Studies

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/film_studies_theses/15

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:film_studies_theses-1014