completed spring 2020
art without eyes
the process of creating a podcast musical
an elon college fellows thesis
by andrew stevens purdy
In addition to being a Music Theatre major at Elon University, I was also a member of the Elon College Fellows Program, which culminates in a research thesis that is presented during senior year. For my four years of college, I worked on my thesis project entitled “Art Without Eyes: The Process of Creating a Podcast Musical.” The purpose of this research was to explore how an existing work of musical theatre can be reimagined and presented to a broad audience in an innovative format. High quality theatre is often inaccessible to the general public, whether it be due to its concentration in major cities, or its soaring ticket prices. In an attempt to broaden the accessibility of theatre, specifically musical theatre, I adapted an existing work of theatre into a podcast musical, a modern descendant of the 20th Century radio drama. The musical Floyd Collins, written by Tina Landau and Adam Guettel, was used as the model for this research. As a supplement to the podcast, a video presentation was created, focusing on background research, obstacles faced, discoveries made, and recommendations for future scholars, as well as clips from the podcast. My objective in conducting this research was to inspire other artistic scholars to reimagine the ways in which their dramatic stories can be told in order to reach a more demographically diverse audience.
Although COVID-19 prevented the podcast from being finished, I am so proud of the work that was created as a part of this process. Below is the video presentation - enjoy!
(*For copyright reasons, my intention has never been to share the entire podcast on a public platform. Rather, the purpose of the project was to share my findings on how existing works of musical theatre can be reimagined and presented to a broad audience in an innovative format.*)
To read Andrew’s in-depth analysis of the musical Floyd Collins, click here!
Questions? Comments? Feel free to reach out to Andrew at aspurdy5@gmail.com!
To view Works Cited, click here.