Date of Award

5-1-2023

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Abstract

This collection of plays explores the ways in which fate, choice, and purpose alter the modes by which we understand ourselves, our families, and our world. The titular work, Homeostasis, acts as a connective tissue, with its lead character, Posey, echoing the themes and characteristics of the central characters in the two other works. Posey, alternating between omniscient and confused, sure and unsure, comedic and dramatic, exemplifies the mixed styles and shifting tones of the collection. "What could I be out there?" she asks, is a question that echoes throughout the plays. These works are founded on ideas of how who we are and what we're meant to be affects our individual existences. The subversion of existing narratives--Eve rejecting the fruit in Is This Purgatory? and Aphrodite's refusal to marry in What Remains is Called Olympus--form another central throughline. Influenced by Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Karel Čapek's R.U.R., among others, Homeostasis and Other Plays demonstrates a range of dramatic structures tailored to each play's unique exploration of darkness, light, fate, and free will.

Handle

http://hdl.handle.net/11122/13381

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