In the advent of the global health crisis caused by COVID-19, performance spaces are compromised. Virtual spaces are temporary alternatives for performances. Though the virtual stage has limitations, it has been considered the alternative and the new normal performance medium. However, immediacy and intimacy have become problematic in such as these compromise our common understanding of the relationship between performers and audiences in virtual performances. This undergraduate thesis interrogates this problem through the ritual performances of contemporary babaylans online. Generally, it asks the question: how babaylans preserve and continue their rituals in the virtual stage? Virtual ethnography is used in analyzing the aforementioned issues. Concerning the virtual method, two contemporary male babaylan practitioners are focused. The ethnography is intended to bring forth insights into the transition and preservation of performing rituals in an alternative space: the virtual stage. Using Philip Auslander’s argument on liveness or the mediatization of performance culture, it is argued that immediacy and intimacies between the performers (the babaylans) and the audiences (the clients) are still lingering in the ontological structure of the virtual performance despite the absence of the traditionally conceived live.

This study focuses on providing a multimodal critical discourse and social semiotic analysis of materials used in France’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign entitled “Vaccin COVID-19 : Se vacciner, se protéger”. The study analyzes six posters and four screenshots taken from a video advertisement using visual grammar tools from Kress and van Leeuwen that are then organized further using a framework for critical discourse analysis by Kilby and Lennon, supplemented by a cultural framework built from the concepts of cultural exception, the concept of third places by Oldenburg, and literature on a selection of cultural aspects relevant to the elements present in the corpus. The objective of the study is to utilize these tools and concepts to analyze and illustrate France’s relationship with third places and cultural elements present in the multimodal materials used in public health communication and how the notion of cultural exception manifests itself in these.

The analysis shows that France’s approach in its COVID-19 vaccination campaign leans towards the usage of cultural references and third places in a positive and encouraging manner. It can be concluded that the presence of these cultural references and the places and venues where these can be enjoyed not only serves as a way to encourage the action of vaccination, but is also a way of perpetuating, maintaining, and establishing this cultural exception, or the cultural elements that contribute to shaping France’s identity and cultural power.

Neoliberalism has grown from an economic model to a globally dominant ideology that upholds individualism and self-reliance. This has permeated the policies and beliefs that circulate various societal structures, resulting not only in the prioritization of market-driven principles in the academe but also the stigmatization of mental health, framing struggles as personal failures. Fassett and Warren’s Critical Communication Pedagogy provides a framework for understanding how everyday communication practices within educational settings reflect and reinforce oppressive neoliberal ideologies, emphasizing the role of education in both perpetuating and resisting these systems. Meanwhile, Meisenbach’s Stigma Management Communication (SMC) theory categorizes the strategies individuals use to manage stigma based on their attitudes towards the stigma's existence and its applicability to themselves. I integrate these theories into my study to answer how students navigate the mental health stigma within academic contexts.

By engaging in dialogue and interviewing three students from the University of the Philippines, I confirmed that students employ various SMC strategies in academic contexts based on multiple factors beyond Meisenbach’s basic criteria. This included their perceptions of professor communication behaviors, their goals in the academe, their current state of mental health, and their personal stance on the mental health stigma. When students are conscious of how the mental health stigma shapes and limits the communication behaviors of their professors, they can regain their agency that has been subsumed by neoliberal agenda and choose the SMC strategy that best manages their stigmatized identity. Consequently, this led to the conclusion that students subvert communicative expectations in neoliberal academic contexts by choosing SMC strategies as creative communicative improvisations. By analyzing these communicative practices, the research points to critical interventions that can transform educational spaces into sites of resistance and empowerment against the dehumanizing effects of neoliberalism.

This undergraduate thesis proposal constitutes a creative exploration of dramaturgy, with the specific objective of adapting Louisa May Alcott's Little Woman into a transcultural Filipino stage production, utilizing Jane Barnette's adaptation dramaturgy. The selection of the classic American novel as the literary centerpiece for a Filipino stage adaptation entails more than mere translation; it involves thoughtful adjustments to ensure resonance with the target audience's cultural context, values, and experiences. To realize the Filipino stage adaptation of Little Women, the initial step involves applying Jane Barnette’s process of adaptation dramaturgy in creating a dramaturgical study that translates the American novel to a Filipino stage adaptation set in the Rural Philippines in the late 1800s. Second, present a dramaturgical study that will serve as the basis of the playwright in writing the adaptation. Third and finally, produce the adaptation via collaborative engagement with an artistic team. This study culminates in the collaborative production of the adaptation, wherein an artistic team is engaged to bring the transcultural vision to life on stage. By combining adaptation dramaturgy, a culturally grounded dramaturgical study, and collaborative artistic efforts, this project seeks not only to adapt a literary classic but also to contribute to the diversification and enrichment of the Filipino theatrical landscape.

The creative project aims to address: how to apply the routines of an athlete into the performance of an actor through the adaptation of Liza Magtoto’s Tamala? The researcher has invested his five years of university life in two specific fields, namely –swimming and theatre. With these two disciplines having opposite traits, the researcher finds a space for its coexistence through the use of exploration in both fields. In the field of sports, he finds advantage in the physicalities needed to perform a character. On the other hand, as an actor, he is capable of embodying the character through the mental exercises required for it. There is then a fine line where these two disciplines meet for the greater good of the production. In the end, the researcher not only made use of this formed concept ‘Artista-Atleta’, but also discovered new methods of expertise to add to his learnings. These are the ‘actor-mover’ and the ‘actor-designer’ roles, which reflect the underlying capabilities the researcher did not shed much light on to begin with. As a researcher still under training, this manuscript archives a number of the capabilities that he has picked up throughout his whole life and applied into one big production —Liza Magtoto’s Tamala.