Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Open Access Thesis

Department

Theatre and Dance

First Advisor

Erica Tobolski

Second Advisor

Lauren Wilson

Abstract

This thesis examines the development of presence as the foundational element of the actor’s craft through a sustained analysis of four major roles performed during the Master of Fine Arts Acting program at the University of South Carolina: Walter Lee Younger in A Raisin in the Sun (Spring 2024), Kesi/the Astronaut in Moon Man Walk (Fall 2024), Dennis in Mauritius (Spring 2025), and Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest (Fall 2025).

The central argument of this thesis is that the actor does not bring the character to life — at full depth; it is the character who brings the actor to life. Each of the four roles examined here offered a distinct and progressive lesson in what it means to be genuinely present rather than merely technically accomplished. Walter Lee Younger taught that presence cannot be inherited or imitated; it must be generated from the actor’s own instrument, history, and authority. Moon Man Walk, under the choreographic direction of Terrance Henderson and informed by the Michael Chekhov technique, revealed that presence lives in the body before it lives anywhere else — that physical intelligence precedes and generates psychological truth rather than the reverse. Dennis in Mauritius demonstrated the counterintuitive dimension of presence: that a character’s concealed interior life, held without release, communicates as powerfully as anything spoken aloud.

And Jack Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest provided the thesis’s central proof — that technique does not precede presence but follows it. When genuine  presence with a character was established, a dialect that had seemed technically insurmountable arrived without being forced.

Across all four productions, a single trajectory emerges: each role moved the actor further from performance and closer to presence. The discipline of fully inhabiting another person’s reality, practiced across different genres, directors, and forms of demand, built capacities that proved transferable not only to subsequent roles but to life beyond the stage. This thesis argues that presence is not a technique to be mastered. It is a practice to be pursued.

Rights

© 2026, De’On Turner

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