Ghostlight: A Fargedy

Author

Ethan Thomas Shaw, Utah State University

Date of Award

5-2025

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Departmental Honors

Department

Theatre Arts

Abstract

Frequently, throughout art media, artists rarely venture from realism. With the stylistic tools and artistic innovations made over the last 150 years that venture past realism, it is time for artists everywhere to take the next big step and begin the ombre of style and genre within works, challenging society in new ways. The goal of this project is to research the function and effect of different genres and styles within theatre and find what is required to successfully communicate them both textually and within a production. This includes reading and researching plays, theatre history, and the influence/evolution of style and genre in theatre, writing a play that communicates thematic elements integral to the story using the aforementioned ombre of style and genre, producing the play (marketing, employing entrepreneurial and artistic minds, budgeting, etc.), directing technical and artistic efforts towards a common creative goal, and performing the self-written play/effectively communicating artistic ideas in front of a live audience. The effect theme has on audiences can vary greatly depending on how and what combinations of genre and style are used. Ergo, we come to the research questions: “What nuances of the writing and performance processes allow for effective combination of different genres and styles?” and “How can genre and style combinations be meaningfully integrated into a playscript and communicated in a production of the play?”

Whereas “genre” denotes categorization of art based on common elements, “style” focuses on how elements manifest and how different approaches to those elements can enhance/change the audience’s experience and understanding. For example, Macbeth contains themes of revenge, death, and betrayal: common elements of tragedy. However, the potential styles of production for Macbeth vary greatly. A naturalist production might emphasize the good, bad, and ugly of a person’s life, whereas a surrealist production might emphasize the psychotic instability of Macbeth’s mind, hellish divinity of the Weird Sisters, and all-encompassing scope of death.

With the completion of the research (reading scripts, writing, and real-time performance and appraisal), the results and conclusions, because they are of an artistic nature, are hard to quantify and/or qualify. In short, with an increase in the stylistic amplitude engaged in theatre, there comes a higher risk for successful satisfaction of the audience. However, an increase in stylistic amplitude does not necessarily equate to an increase in emotional amplitude in the audience’s experience, though it may (and did within the bounds of this research). Despite the lack of inherent correlation between audience’s emotional satisfaction and range of style used, the ways in which themes were painted by non- /antirealistic styles were able to affect the audience in atypical, “fresher” ways that led to an increase in emotional amplitude experienced by the audience, feigning a correlation between emotional and stylistic amplitudes. This was deducted in the comparison of three factors:

• Emotional amplitude achieved by both mono- and poly-stylistic pieces
• Frequency of mono- and poly-stylistic pieces being produced and consumed in the world
• Audience satisfaction

Further research is required for accurate deductions at this juncture.

Recommended Citation

Shaw, Ethan Thomas, "Ghostlight: A Fargedy" (2025). Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects. 1024.
https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/honors/1024