UC Santa Cruz

For my thesis project I chose and was approved to direct Princess Ivona in the University of California-Santa Cruz Second Stage. Published in 1938 and written by Polish novelist and playwright Witold Gombrowicz, Princess Ivona tells the story of how a society, hastily built upon fear-centric oppression, violently reacts when its crooked structure of power is put into question. In this thesis I will recount the production process as it unfolded while examining how power circulates in rehearsal between a director and their collaborators, power as it is represented in the script, and finally how we presented it on stage.