Honors Program
Fine and Performing Arts Honors
Date of Award
5-2016
Thesis Professor(s)
Katherine Weiss
Thesis Professor Department
Literature and Language
Thesis Reader(s)
Scott Contreras-Koterbay, Patrick Cronin
Abstract
The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, but also impacting an audience in methods that film will never be able to do so. Maria Friedman’s High Society is a primary example that reaffirms how theatre can triumph the continual debate when compared to its preceding film – The Philadelphia Story – directed by George Cukor, both artistically and through its overall execution of the profound topics represented within the original text. This thesis will primarily juxtapose Cukor’s iconic film with Friedman’s revival of the former that was performed in 2015 at London’s Old Vic theatre, offering an innovative rebuttal to the preexisting debate as well as to affirm the argument of how theatre compellingly transforms the mundane.
Publisher
East Tennessee State University
Document Type
Honors Thesis - Open Access
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Speight, Dana T. Ms., "Transforming the Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’s "High Society" with George Cukor’s "The Philadelphia Story" as an Emphasis on the Importance of Theatre" (2016). Undergraduate Honors Theses. Paper 352. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/352
Copyright
Copyright by the authors.
Included in
American Film Studies Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Performance Studies Commons, Visual Studies Commons