www.mattfotis.com

Saturday Night Live has a long and storied tradition of political satire. In 2008, Tina Fey’s impersonation of Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Sarah Palin seemingly changed the way that people viewed Palin in a way that no previous SNL parody had. This paper closely examines what has been dubbed “The Tina Fey Effect” by analyzing the evolution of Palin’s identity and perception, culminating with Palin’s interview with CBS News’s Katie Couric. The parody of the Couric interview on SNL was a clear turning point in the campaign, and in Palin’s national perception. Most SNL parodies stretch the truth to an absurd level in order to achieve a satirical point. Yet with Palin, Fey was almost simply repeating what Palin had said, and the results were devastating. After the Couric interview and subsequent spoof, Fey became the authority on all things Palin. Whatever Fey said was the truth, with Palin simply reinforcing Fey’s version of reality. Obviously Palin’s fall is not solely due to SNL, yet it is hard to ignore Fey’s impersonation of Palin. The Tina Fey Effect impacted the polls, but not because Fey satirized Palin on SNL. Numerous presidents and politicians have endured SNL’s satirical jibes.  Reagan was a favorite target of the program and there is wide spread support to put him on Mt. Rushmore. What ultimately doomed Sarah Palin was Tina Fey’s ability to usurp Palin’s authenticity. Fey became the true voice of Palin, telling us what Palin was really thinking and feeling. By taking over control of Palin’s identity, Fey doomed Palin’s campaign. In the end the simulacrum was true.

Shakespeare and popular culture have a long and complicated relationship. Shakespeare is no longer isolated in academies and on the ‘proper stage.’ He’s appearing more and more, and in more and more diverse ways. We see him on stage, on film, and in advertisements. His name is evoked in politics, romance and novels (and romance novels). Shakespeare tourism, folklore and mythology have become a part of our cultural and national identities. Quite simply, Shakespeare’s relationship to popular culture matters. One of the more interesting contemporary Shakespop examples is the Chicago group The Improvised Shakespeare Company (ISC). The players take an audience suggestion for a play title that has yet to be written, and then create a fully improvised two-act play in Shakespearean verse, incorporating the language, style and themes from the Bard’s collected works. Douglas Lanier argues that our ideas and notions about Shakespeare are constantly being shaped and reformed through popular appropriations. As Lanier argues, Shakespeare in pop culture is “an important means by which notions about Shakespeare’s cultural significance [can be] created, extended, debated, revised, and renewed, not only parodied or critiqued.” As a result many contemporary appropriations struggle to both lay claim to and contest Shakespeare’s authority. Contemporary uses of Shakespeare, according to Diana Henderson, not only “remake him in our own image…but they also teach us to see that image and the past anew." Like many other appropriations, collaborations and adaptations, The ISC reveals current attitudes toward and the relationship between popular culture and Shakespeare.

Improvisational performance and television have had a long and rocky courtship. Improv has been on the tube for decades, with a recent explosion of shows. Improv specific programs like Whose Line is it Anyway? have proven successful, while shows using improvisation and improv techniques like Curb Your Enthusiasm and even Saturday Night Live have changed the way people view and make television. Yet improv and television have never tied the knot. There exists a tension between the two forces that continually threatens their coexistence.  So why haven’t improv and television achieved the same harmony and success as the traditional sitcom, evening news and sporting events? There has been a growing trend of improv on television, but most shows have failed to find sustained success. But that might be due to the type of improv on display. As Dan Kois notes in an article about the improvised show Thank God You’re Here, which relied on quick jokes at the expense of a B-list celebrity blindly thrown into an improvised situation: “it’s funny to see someone come up with a quick-witted joke [such as on Whose Line is it Anyway?]; it’s astonishing to see a team invent an entire well-structured, hilarious scene from scratch [such as with long form improv]." So why doesn’t that happen? Improv seems highly suited for television—it’s cheap, inventive, creative, funny, fresh and fun to watch—yet it hasn’t quite worked out that way. As Kois says, “seasoned improv performers can cook up 30-minute scenes onstage that are wilder, funnier, and more emotional than most sitcoms can dream of being—and sitcom actors don’t have audiences rooting wholeheartedly for their success.” An examination of why improv hasn't really worked on television, and how it might work in the future.

The long form improv structure known as the Harold reinvented the possibilities of what could be done with improv on stage and propelled iO near the top of the improv hierarchy.  The Harold and iO provided improvisational theatre with a legitimate and repeatable form that allowed improv to grow exponentially.  Yet some still don’t view improv as a viable product, and argue that the Harold has made the form stagnant.  Twenty five years later what is the current state of the Harold at iO?  How prevalent is it for performers, and what impact does it have on performance?  Through interviews with current performers and graduates of the training center, this study focuses on the iO training center, where the Harold is first taught to students, a typical evening of iO Harold teams, and a look at how iO has moved beyond the Harold through an analysis of the group TJ & Dave.  While the Harold is still the predominant form at the theatre, performers are given greater freedom within the structure to experiment, with more experienced players and teams allowed to totally alter and move beyond the form.

“Maybe that’s what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in fuckin’ Bruges.”

The afterlife has captured man’s curiosity for centuries. The thirst for knowledge, to know what happens when we die has been taken up by scores of religions, philosophers, academics and lay-men around the world. While heaven and hell have taken up the bulk of the attention, purgatory has captured a special part of our collective imagination. From Dante’s Divine Comedy to the hit television series Lost purgatory has long been a part of art and popular culture. Martin McDonagh’s 2008 film In Bruges continues the tradition by focusing on what hit man Ray (Colin Farrell) describes as the “in-betweeny one.” The film is essentially about redemption, morality and identity, and the idea of purgatory serves to heighten and intensify the major action of the film. I will be exploring the concept and use of purgatory in the film in order to gain a deeper understanding of the film, and to explore the themes and concepts of purgatory in popular culture.

Mixing historical genres and characters with a sharp wit and innovate style, Itamar Moses has captivated audiences and polarized critics with his original plays focused on power, ambition and celebrity. From the historical fiction of Bach’s rise to fame in Bach at Leipzig, the semi-autobiographical play about the competition and celebrity between two young writers in The Four of Us, the fictional prison housing several (in)famous criminals in Celebrity Row, to the steroids scandal in Back, Back, Back; Moses seems obsessed with power, celebrity and ambition, and how the three coalesce and coexist in contemporary American culture. Sometimes criticized for his focus on male competitiveness (there are virtually no women in his early plays), critics have overlooked the larger issues within his work. In a culture consumed by power and celebrity, Moses’ plays speak directly to the very fabric of American values, and do so in an intelligent, creative and humorous way. Using a Foucaldian lens this study will explore Moses' Outrage to introduce Moses’ work to a wider scholarly audience and open the debate about the themes, ideas and theatricality he is exploring in his work.

Improvisational theatre is quickly becoming one of the more popular forms of theatrical performance.  Yet its meaning remains elusive, and improv itself is still not seen as a legitimate form of artistic expression by many scholars, audience members and theatre practitioners.  This analysis explores the three main genres of improvisational theatre using a postmodern methodology to examine the ways in which the form reflects and or functions according to postmodern principles.  By framing improv this way, a greater understanding of the highly postmodern form will be achieved, leading to a legitimation and validation of improv by the greater academic and professional world.

In order to fully understand the current form and how it functions in and reflects a postmodern ideology, the work begins with the historical development of improvisational theatre. The second chapter examines short form improv, the most commercially successful and widely accessible form of improvisation.  This chapter focuses on the influential company ComedySportz, which has worked to commodify improv and reinforce conservative cultural values, and the television show Whose Line is It Anyway?, which has greatly expanded improv’s exposure, but also propagated a highly edited and manipulated version of improv.

The next section focuses on the Harold, the scene-based staple of long form, and other scene based structures that reflect postmodernity.  Through groups like Bassprov, as well as the new mediated generation of improvisers, this chapter further analyzes the overt ways improv reflects postmodernism.  Scriptprov, written work based in improv, examines the ways in which improv exists on the page.  This section examines Second City and the highly postmodern Annoyance Theatre.  The analysis ends with a look at the work of Ferrari McSpeedy, “the” postmodern group that ties together and exemplifies many of the ways in which improvisational theatre reflects and works in a postmodern world.