An experiment in linear playwriting, "The Last Croissant", a new play, explores the possibilities of crafting non gender, age, sexuality, or race specific roles while following a traditional story arc with developed characters. A farcical framing with a single setting, heightened language, circumstances, and meta-theatrical casting is employed to achieve this effect. The result is a clown tragedy camping trip with a minimalist aesthetic, stylized word play and characters that span the spectrum of absurdism to caricature to naturalism. Magical realism is heavily employed and serves as a bridge between these otherwise disparate elements, stitching together clown-like moments of wonder with more relatable honest interactions. Ultimately this play follows the lives of individuals who, much like everyone I have ever met, are taking a moment to stop and think--sometimes with amazement, sometimes with anger, and sometimes with despair, before continuing to get by

This is a comprehensive account of devising a playwritting practice through techniques in improvisational and devised theater. The primary research referenced in this document consists of one full play script, Matriarch, and a plot outline composed in tandem with Professor James Bierman for a play entitled The Rubber Room; additional excerpts from various other manuscripts are meant to be included as case studies. These case studies are requisite to establish development of a style and disciplinary refinement through the Master's Program in Theater Arts at the University of California Santa Cruz between the Winter of 2014 and the Spring of 2015.

Maria - a Telenovela for the Stage is more than an adaptation of Euripides’ Medea. It is multi-media, transtemporal conversation between a variety of literary and cultural works, framed and within a contemporary context. From The Tempest, with stagings that reverse the gender and race of the characters, to the Latin American telenovela, with the genre’s objectification of the female body through media imagery that reproduces ideals of femininity in el mundo latino, Maria challenges the canonical character of Medea and attempts to make her actions / motivations sympathetic to a contemporary audience. This thesis is an extended translator's note to Maria - a telenovela for the stage and a paratextual commentary for our times, examining Medea's various permutations across time, genre, media, and technologies. It is my intention to point out how a story that has endured over 2,800 years of cultural variation continues to speak to our present moment and to ask what it means to digitize and adapt Euripides’ Medea as a Latin American Telenovela for the stage.