Date of Completion
2023
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Theatre
Thesis Type
Honors College, College of Arts and Science Honors
First Advisor
Zeina Salame
Second Advisor
Sara Nelson
Third Advisor
Steve Budington
Keywords
theatre, scenic design, set design, queer, design
Abstract
The play Straight White Men by Young Jean Lee emphasizes challenges to established suburban norms of straight white masculinity, what it means to be a family, and how it feels to be home for the holidays.
In my scenic design for the Royall Tyler Theatre’s production in 2022, I used personal experience as a middle-class, queer white woman to shape the familiar suburban living room into a simulated, queered display to explore empathizing with the straight white male characters of the show, and those who the audience may know in real life. My fellow collaborators and I had the opportunity to explore identity and suburbia, build a space which is often exclusionary and imbue it with care, queerness, and empathy.
Through the construction of a heterosexual home, I discovered things about scenic design, myself as an artist, and the importance of representation in cultivating healthy creative spaces for non-straight, non-white, and/or non-men.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Martine, Isabel M., "The Hetero Home: The Scenic Design of "Straight White Men" For the Royall Tyler Theatre" (2023). UVM Honors College Senior Theses. 571.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/571