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Abstract:
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In her longitudinal research project On the Road: A Search for American Character,
Anna Deavere Smith created a performance process blending journalism and theatre, and
by doing so succeeded in capturing an inherent essence of character through language,
tone and gesture by recreating verbatim excerpts from conducted interviews onto the
stage. In most of her works, Smith applies politically driven and event based topics that
affect targeted groups or cultures within a community such as the Hasidic Jews and
African Americans of Crown Heights, Brooklyn featured in Smith's earlier work Fires in
the Mirror. In the following Master's thesis, I provide a comparative analysis of my
adaptation of Smith's docu-theatre process and argue its ability to succeed by accessing a
personal and familial-based topic with its own social repercussions - namely Alzheimer's
disease. Moreover, I explain the effectiveness of this adaptation given the instructional
and informational application of the topic of my play, Sweetening the Broccoli:
Reflections on Alzheimer 's that can be targeted towards a more specific audience of
caregivers and family members of Alzheimer's patients.
mnittee Chair
DeTmda S. 69d/ h
Dade
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