Camping in the Classroom: Ridiculous Theatre as Serious Drama

My first semester pursuing my MFA in Voice and Speech Pedagogy I vocal-coached an openly gay student playing a straight character who would mask his sexual identity in such a manner that his performance became stiff and uninteresting. Rather than using his personal identity as an asset in the pursuit of a successful performance, his chosen vocal tactics removed any sense of theatricality from his performance. I confronted the student and suggested such extreme vocal suppression diminished the quality of his overall performance. He replied, "So you want me to get the gay out."His use of the phrase, "get the gay out" to describe a fuller adaptation of his sexual identity to suit the character fascinated me and led to me to create a performance seminar course that used open acknowledgment of Camp performance styles as a valuable way to prepare students, gay or straight, for careers on the stage and screen. This thesis is a record of the course taught in the spring of 2007; CAMP: RIDICULOUS THEATRE AS SERIOUS DRAMA.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Fine Arts

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Theatre

Year dc:date.available

2007

Author dc:creator

• DeBoer, John Kenneth

Contributors dc:contributor

• Janet Rodgers

• camp
• gender
• sexuality
• performance
• voice and speech
• ridiculous theatre
• divas
• melodrama
• musical comedy
• theatre
• drag performance
• Arts and Humanities
• Theatre and Performance Studies

Statement dc:rights

• © The Author

Identifier

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/874

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-1873