Amy Bernard

Date of Award

2017

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Cottrell, Catherine

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

Theatre exercises can provide participants with opportunities to physically and emotionally express themselves within a supportive environment in ways that have been found to improve quality of life. The current study aims to determine whether different theatrical types of projects result in the implementation of varied psychological benefits related to social confidence, personal confidence, and community connectedness. Four different performance groups utilizing three distinct theatrical styles were studied at the beginning and midway through rehearsals to obtain self-reported confidence and connectivity data. While it was expected that participants in each group would experience global benefits across all outcome variables, partial support of the main hypotheses suggests that factors like time spent in the college environment, previous theatrical experience, and professionalism of the director have a noticeable impact on the way actors experience psychological benefits.

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