History of the Honors Program
On the 26th Anniversary of the Program, Fall 2024
Compiled by Carol Martin
In the spring/fall of 1997, Bob Vorlicky chaired a committee to research what an Honors Program in Theatre Studies in the Department of Drama might be in terms of courses, mission, goals, implementation, and staffing.
The work of the members of the first Honors Committee (Bob Vorlicky, Laura Levine, and Gwen Alker) was approved by the Theatre Studies faculty, and the first course, “Solo Performance: Historicizing and Theorizing the Genre” taught by Bob Vorlicky, appeared in the Spring 1998 Prompt Book (the guide to courses at that time) and was offered in the Fall of 1998. Bob became the “Coordinator” of the Honors Program that spring. The first student to receive an Honors Certificate was Jonathan Ross in 2000.
In 2002, Bob asked Kevin Kuhlke (then Department Chair) to approve Laura Levine as Co-Coordinator of the Honors Program. Starting in Fall 2003, both Laura and Bob were Co-Coordinators of the Honors Program (Bob was also the Director of Theatre Studies).
Carol Martin took over the position in January 2015 when she was appointed by Ted Ziter. The title at the time was Coordinator of the Honors Program but was later changed, with Dean Louis Scheeder’s approval, to Director of the Honors Program.
Initially, there were typically two Honors Seminars offered per year with the exceptions of 2003-2004, and 2006-2007 when four courses were offered. Beginning in 2017, four Seminars were typically offered, a number sustained until 2020 when, because of demand, five Seminars were typically offered annually. Since 2018, there have been 48 students graduating with Honors Certificates.
In October 2000, Una Chaudhuri wrote to the Department of Drama and Dean Campbell acknowledging “[…] Bob and the members of the Honors Committee for all the incredible work they have done to make this dream of ours a reality. The quality of the Honors Program demonstrates that we “take the intellectual training our young theatre artists as seriously as we do their artistic training.” Bob followed with an email to the faculty on October 29 in which he alerted them to Laura Levine’s Honors Seminar, “How to do Things with Theory: Texts and Contexts” in the Spring of 2001 closing his correspondence with the following:
The [Honors] program is up and running in full force now after 2 1/2 years--which is a terrific addition to the Dept of Drama's curriculum, recruitment, and retention efforts. Our first student to complete a thesis and graduate with an "Honors Certificate" was Jonathan Ross, Class of 2000. Several students from the Class of 2001 are currently writing their theses. I hope you share with me a sense of pride and respect for our students' intellectual achievements.”
In the twenty-six years of the Honors Program, our stellar faculty has offered ground-breaking Seminars. Post-Colonial Theatre, Japanese Performance, Theatre and Ecology, After Lives of Endor, The Drama of Capitol, Monsters, Performing the Real, Performance of the State, Women Who Kill, Thinkers/Makers/Dramaturgs, American Race Melodrama, The Future of Normal, Performing Beyond the Human, The Digital Nineteenth Century, Feminism, Gender and Sexuality in Performance, Performing the Future, Arab Performance and Politics, Gender Performance and the Third Wave, Nationalism, Art, Entertainment, The Neuroscience of Theatre, and The Digital Nineteenth Century are among the many Seminars offered.
We learned that the political moment can influence Seminar enrollment when in Spring 2017 after Hillary Clinton lost the election for President of the United States, the enrollment for Gwendolyn Alker’s “Gender, Performance and the Third Wave” filled with overflow demand. Given the extraordinary circumstance, Dean Green responded positively to our petition to support another Seminar that Spring and we offered Alisa Zhulina’s “Feminism, Gender and Sexuality in Performance.”
At the 2019 Drama Awards, I noted:
Due to our extraordinary and devoted faculty and gifted students, six of our Honors students have been accepted to graduate programs in Performance Studies (Cati Kolinoski, ‘19), English/Renaissance studies (Isabel Dollar), English and Comparative Literature ( ), and law school (Juliana Corsetti). Students in Robert Davis’s 19th Century Digital Humanities Honors Seminar collectively published an essay [see Blair Best, et al. “Reading Macro and Micro Trends in Nineteenth-Century Theatre History.” In D19: Digital Pedagogies and Nineteenth-Century American Literatures. Edited by Jessica Despain and Jennifer Travis. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press (2018]; a sophomore student published his final essay from an Honors course in TheatreTimes, and a recent graduate got a job at the Folger Shakespeare Library (Juliet Jewett).
This was just one moment in time. Our Honors students have so many accomplishments. Here are some examples since 2015:
Karishma Bhagani, class of 2019, (B.F.A. with Honors Certificate in Drama, and a B.A. with Honors in History) is working toward a Ph.D. at Stanford University’s Theater Arts and Performance Studies Department. She is the recipient of the Knight-Hennessy Scholarship, a multicultural community leadership program that prepares students to address complex challenges facing the world. The scholarship provides three years of fully funded graduate education. Karishma is the executive producer for the Nairobi Theatre Initiative. She initiated Theatre for One by six Kenyan women playwright-performers presented at the Arts Centre, NYU Abu Dhabi.
Lachlan Sage Brooks, class of 2017, received an MA in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University in 2020.
Emma Reade Dorfman, class of 2020, (B.F.A. with Honors Certificate in Drama) was accepted to graduate study at NYU’s MA program in Performance Studies, Columbia University’s MFA program in Dramaturgy, and the MA Program in Dramaturgy and Writing for Performance at Goldsmith, University of London, which she attended in the fall of 2021.
Emily Erickson, class of 2016, completed an MA at George Washington University and went on to direct a site-specific production of The Tempest in Bermuda.
Isabel Dollar, class of 2015, completed a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies at St. Andrews University, Scotland.
Juliet Jewett, class of 2016, worked at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre and went on to stage manage The Importance of Being Earnest at Barrington Stage.
Essence Lotus Johnson, class of 2020, (B.F.A. with Honors Certificate in Drama and a minor in Creative Writing) is a recipient of the Marshall and Mitchell Scholarships and a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. The Marshall Scholarship is one of the most selective postgraduate fellowships for American undergraduates and funds two years of study in the United Kingdom. Johnson will pursue a master’s degree in Applied Theatre at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a master’s in the Theatre Lab program at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Cati Kalinowski, class of 2019, received an MA from the Department of Performance Studies at New York University in 2020.
Phillip Kenner, class of 2018, pursued an MFA in Writing for Screen and Stage from Northwestern University. After graduating, he was a Program Administrator for the Sundance Institute Theatre Lab, had a play produced at Dixon place, and a poem published by Book Culture in their bookstore poets series.
Lucas Kernan, class of 2021, (B.F.A. with Honors Certificate in Drama, excellence in acting at The Meisner Studio, part of the Nine Muses Lab, an application-only fellowship program headed by Bryce Dallas Howard) was an Associate Producer for the improv group, Baby Wants Candy, at the 2019 Edinburgh Fringe Festival where he hired a 25-person team and oversaw marketing, production, and communicating with Festival staff leading up to the Festival.
Ilana Khanin, class of 2015, completed an MA at the Department of Performance Studies, NYU.
Kairos Looney, class of 2015, is studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin where they received the 2020 Frederick J. Hunter Award for Theatre History and Criticism and the 2019 James H. Parke Memorial Scholarship Award. At New York University, awards include the President's Service Award, the Bevya Rosten Memorial Award, and the Stella Adler Space Grant Award for developing new work. Artistic residencies include Brave Space Project, Judson Memorial Church, and The Barn Arts Collective.
Felix Murphet, class of 2016, received a law degree from UCLA in 2023.
Audrey Rogulski, class of 2022, is a recipient of the inaugural Undergraduate Humanities Fellowship from the NYU Center for the Humanities and was accepted into the Ph.D. program in the Department of French at NYU.
Mimi Schlecht, class of 2024, was accepted into the Department of Art and Public Policy at NYU.
Harriet Taylor, class of 2015, is working toward a joint degree at RADA and Birkbeck in the UK.
Ian Young, class of 2015, is teaching at Springfield Charter School after two years of teaching in Morocco.
Over the history of the Honors Program in Theatre Studies, faculty have taken students to national conferences to present their research, organized Departmental panels where Honors Seminar students both presented their research and formally responded to their peers' work, and more recently, in the interest of uniting theory and practice, collaborated with design students in Dan Soule’s Set Design I about site-specific productions of Medea (Carol Martin’s “Women Who Kill” Honors Seminar).
The Honors Program continues to drive faculty research and writing and innovations in the Theatre Studies curriculum. Honors Thesis Seminars provide a unique opportunity for undergraduate students to conduct original research under the guidance of full-time faculty members. The Honors Program is the first explicitly designed Honors research program at Tisch School of the Arts. It is a model program for undergraduate research in theatre and performance studies.
Honors Theses Since 2015*
Graduation May 2015 Honors Theses
Ethan C. Abramson, "Absence of Absence: The Neglected Secular Necessity.” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Nikita Chaudhry, "Brownness & Belonging: Navigating South Asian American Women’s Identity on the U.S. Stage.” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Anna Crouch, “Conspiracy vs Contingency: Narrativizing as a Form of Agency in Climate Change Plays." Thesis Advisor Una Chaudhuri
Isabel Dollar, “'Ticing Strumpet' & 'Mighty Queen': Dido, Queen of Carthage &
Elizabethan Prejudices on the Failings of a Female Monarch.” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Taylor Edelhart, “Ready Player Everyone: Digital Nativity, Games: The Body, and the Future of the American Theater." Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Kayla Eisenberg, "Celestial Shakespeare: The Science and Politics of Astrology in Post-Reformation England and its Influence on Shakespeare’s Body of Work." Thesis Advisor Jesse Njus
Derek Hedbany, “Troilus Divided: These Are and Are not Paradigms.” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Ilana Khanin's, “Theatricality, Anti-Theatricality, and the Performance Event as Subject.” Thesis Advisor Edward Ziter
Noelia Mann, “Classical Adaptation as a Stage for the Colonial Encounter.” Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Kyle Rogers, "Origins and Aesthetics of Queer Futurities in Contemporary Performance." Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Kelsy Schergen, “Asian American=Asian+American: Finding Inclusion within the American Musical." Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Harriet Taylor, “Sandman to Sondheim: The Influence of E.T.A. Hoffman on Stephen Sondheim's 'Passion.'” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Ian Young, “Paul's Discontents: Examining Shakespeare Through the Epistle to the Romans.” Thesis Advisor: Laura Levine
Graduation May 2016 Honors Theses
Katherine Banos “Denial, Absence, and Terror: The Transition into Post-9/11 Performance”
Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Megan Burnett, “The Role of Veterans in Theater: How the American Stage is Embracing Members of the United States Armed Forces” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Haley Carter, “SNL: Satirizing Nation Leaders” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón Bentin
Michelle Nicole Brady Davis “Black Mothers on the U.S. Stage: The Historical Transcendence from Object to Subject” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Scott Jackoway, “Political Musical Theatre: The Convergence of Present Time, Place, and Action for ‘Other’ Americans” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Juliet Celeste Richlan Jewett, “Doubling in Commedia Dell’Arte: Balanchine’s Harlequinade as a Retelling of Scala's Scenarios of the Commedia Dell’ Arte” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Ilana Khanin, Theatricality, Anti-Theatricality and the Performance of Event as Subject
Thesis Advisor Edward Ziter
Emily Erickson, “Animals and 'Classical' Ballet: The ACB's of Christopher Wheeldon in Wonderland” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Cassidy Dawn Graves, “Aristotle Versus Aftercare: The Properly Constructed BDSM Scene’s Absence on the New York Stage” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Fiona Robert Kapacinskas, "What do you do when you're not sure?" An Exploration of Disaster, Doubt and the Suspension of Judgment” Thesis Advisor: Laura Levine
Rebecca Amy King, “Must the Fat Lady Sing?: The Misrepresentation of Women of Size on the American Stage” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Tessa Jane Lee, “Resisting American Theatrical Convention: The Co-Creations of Devised Ensembles” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Alexander Might, “Whitewashing in Gay Theatre: 1984-2016” Thesis Advisor Alisa Sniderman
Kyle Rogers, “Performing Identity, Performing Icon: Liminalities and Performance” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón Bentin
Sophie Sagan-Gutherz, “Staging Black Women’s Bodies: A Historical Representation of Slavery and Rape” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Allison Waxman, “The Racialization of Women’s Agency in Athol Fugard’s Apartheid Plays”
Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
James McGowan Wyrwicz, (Re)Staging History: Repetition, Revision, and Utopia in Contemporary American Playwriting” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Luke Michael Zimmerman, “Verse from the Androgynous Mind: An Argument for the Dissolution of Gender in Shakespearean Texts” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Graduation May 2017 Honors Theses
Damian Quinn, “Acting Nature: The Embodiment of Presence from Graining to Performance” Thesis Advisor, Robert Vorlicky
Margaret Remboski, “Bloody Me: Or Bleeding Women’s Bodies in U.S. Performance” Thesis Advisor, Robert Vorlicky
Jared Free, “Echoes of Humanity: The Collapse of Non-Human Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion” Thesis Advisor Alisa Sniderman
Phillip Kenner, “Imaginary Friends: The Evolution of the Homosexual Male Playwright’s Manipulation of Identity” Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Madeleine Cella, “Unknowable: The Nature of Truth in the Information Society” Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Lachlin Brooks, “Making and Unmaking Skepticism in Montaigne, The Merchant of Venice, and Macbeth, Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Zennie Trieu, “Paragon of the People First, A Hero of His Household Second: The New Economic Existence of the Father Figure in Modern Day Middle Class America” Thesis Advisor Alisa Sniderman
Dylan Arrendondo, “Pedophilia and Performance” Pedophilic Treatment Through the Lens of Fantasy, Reality, and Ethics” Thesis Advisor Alisa Sniderman
Sarah Cook, “Taking up Space: The Regulation, Representation, and Reclamation of Fat Female Bodies in the U.S.” Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Georgette Alimperti, “The Language in Which She Dreams” Surrealism, the Unconscious, and Female Agency” Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Isabel Langen, “Violent Performance Art and the Elitists Revolution” Thesis Advisor Alisa Sniderman
Graduation May 2018 Honors Theses
Blair Best, “Her great cry is for women-to make them better by making them freer”: Rachel Crothers and the “New Woman” on the Early Twentieth-Century American Stage” Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
Eli LaCroix, “Fantastick Success: An Exploration of a Forty-Two-Year Run” Thesis Advisor
Alisa Zhulina
Juliana Corsetti, “Mother’s Milk: Mapping the Feminist Autobiography” Thesis Advisor Professor Laura Levine
Elsa Kegelman, ‘Is't real that I see?: Seeing, Believing, and Love in Two Gentlemen of Verona and All's Well That Ends Well" Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Sean Conroy, “Got To Be Real: The Cost of Equality” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón Bentin
Teagan Rabuano, “Tomorrow for Me: The Invisibility of the Trans- Feminine Body in Theatre and Live Performance" Thesis Advisor Robert Vorlicky
Sarah Cook, “Taking Up Space: The Regulation, Representation, and Reclamation of Fat Female Bodies in the U.S.” Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Graduation May 2019 Honors Theses
Karishma Bhagani, “Tributary Tales: Using Rasa as a Lens to Decolonize Yoruba Masquerade” Thesis directed by Professor Erin B. Mee with Professor Joshua Williams
Cati Kalinowski, “Archives and Their Performances” Thesis directed by Professor Erin B. Mee
Karma Masselli, “Holocaust Drama: A Negotiation of Absence in Embodied and Linguistic Representations of Trauma” Thesis directed by Arts Coordinator and Faculty at NYU Berlin Dr. Katrin Dettmer with Dr. Gwendolyn Alker
Meagan Grace Sisler, “Masculine Women and the Possibility of Transformation” Thesis directed by Professor Laura Levine
Graduation May 2020 Honors Theses
Emma Reade Dorfman, “Apart, Together: Networked Spectatorship in a Virulent Age” Thesis directed by Alisa Zhulina
Essence John Johnson, “Metempsychosis: Examining the Transmigration of Black Queerness as a Resilient Force of Possibility” Thesis directed by Alisa Zhulina
Amanda Elise Lanza, “Forced into Hysterics: The “Madwomen” of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and Tennessee Williams’s A Street Car Named Desire”Thesis directed by Alisa Zhulina
Emily Preis, “Performance as an Act of Tribal Sovereignty: Conversations with Mary Kathryn Nagle, Randy Reinholz, Ty Defoe” Thesis directed by Mauricio Salgado
Kyndall Sillanpaa, “You Get to Speak Poetry”: How Western Acting Pedagogies Have Taught Actors to Chase the Rush of Personal Emotional Exploitation” Thesis directed by Alisa Zhulina
Iris Smith-d’Agincourt, "I must be brave whether my request is successful or not": Women Seeking Justice in Euripides' Barbarian Plays” Thesis directed by Robert Davis
Graduation May 2021 Honors Theses
Lucas Kernan, “Le Jeu, Bouffon, and the Abject: The Actor as Other in Philippe Gaulier’s Classroom” Thesis Advisor Carol Martin
Zara Lemieux, “Happy to Meat You: The Theatrical Representation of Cannibalism in the United States” Thesis directed by Erin Mee
Brock Looser, “Shakespeare’s Societal Others: An Exploration of Race, Religion, Sexuality, and Gender in The Merchant of Venice and Othello” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Kyra Moskowitz, “To Share or To Shock: The Argument for Trigger Warnings in Postdramatic Feminist Theater” Thesis Advisor Katrin Detmer (NYU Berlin)
Diego Blanc Zoco, “Zooming In: Defining the Boundaries of Digital Live Performance”
Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Graduation May 2022 Honors Theses
Stella Ferra, “And Yet I Rage Alone, And Cannot Quit My Rage:” A Rumination on the Lives of Madwomen” Thesis Advisor Gwendolyn Alker
Michael-Eoin Stanney, “War of Images: Hollywood, Militarism, and US Empire” Thesis Advisor Sebastian Calderon
Ines Ladha, “Excuse Moi, Je Suis Français”: Performing French Bourgeois National Identity Through Fashion” Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
Laurel Ledesma, “And Yet You Say I Am Made Small By Grief": Mourning as an Act of Rebellion in Euripides” Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
Jessica Wall, “Narrative and Reality: Using Theatre to Tell the Story of Public Trauma” Thesis Advisor Carol Martin
Alexandra Hess, “Performative Mimicry and Women’s Homosociality: Disrupting the ‘Masochistic Position’ of Women Characters and Feminist Spectators” Thesis Advisor Carol Martin
Jordan Noelle Rene Flippo, “A Girl’s Guide to Surviving a Horror Movie: The Representation of Femininity Throughout Television and Film” Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Yiling Luo, “Labor and boredom in Chekhov's plays” Thesis Advisor Ted Ziter
Graduation May 2023 Honors Theses
Audrey Rogulski, “Chelsea Jina du Toit, “Soft Power “In a Vacuum:” Cultural Diplomacy and Francophone Decolonial Theatre in the U.S.” Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Chelsea Jina du Toit, “The Anti-Capitalist Framework of Theatre of the Oppressed in South Africa” Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Cindy Xu, “The Return Of The Circus: Contemplating Risk And Reality Under The Big Top”
Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón Bentin
Víctor Andrés Marroquín-Merino, “Death, Memory, and Persuasion: Political Oratory as Performance in Latin America” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón Bentin
Graduation May 2024 Honors Theses
Mimi Schlecht, “Beyond the Face that Launched a Thousand Ships: Feminist Adaptations and the Ongoing Liberation of Helen of Troy” Thesis Advisor Carol Martin
Tay Yu Zhe Isaac, “Journalism and Theater as Mediums of Storytelling” Thesis Advisor Carol Martin
Bianca Torrente, “Neurodiversity and the Arts Why Implementing the Arts in Neurodivergent Settings is Beneficial for All” Thesis Advisor Alisa Zhulina
Enid Acevedo-Colón, “Hablando Spanglish: Language, Politics, and Identity in Puerto Rican Island-Based Performance” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Calderón
Olivia Fergus-Brummer, “From Cell to Spectacle: Evolutionary Biology as a Framework for Performance Process” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Bentin Calderón
Anahita Monfared Woman, “Life, Freedom: The Politics of Performance in State (Un)Making in Contemporary Iran” Thesis Advisor Sebastián Bentin Calderón
Audrey Miller, “'Do Not Say ’tis Superstition': Examining Religious Imagery in the Texts and Adaptations of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Romeo and Juliet.” Thesis Advisor Laura Levine
Ariana Montoya, “Using Drama to Enhance and Accelerate Language Learning for Adult Latine Students” Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
Carson Robles, “Re-Gendering the Oresteia: A Postmodern Critique of the Classical Male-Female Binary Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
Ella Danyluk, “Evolution of The Monstrous-Feminine: Catharsis, Democracy, and Gore Thesis Advisor Robert Davis
*Please note records of Honors Theses before 2015 were not kept.