Abstract

Three Forks is a thesis drama series about a 19th-century woman sent West to live with her estranged family in Muscogee, a lawless town where justice bends to power and survival means learning the game — or being buried by it. As we follow our lead, Eleanor Davis, out West and eventually her settlement into town, we gain a look into her new world, one where tribal council contend with encroaching U.S. jurisdiction and where settlers, freedmen, and railroad men jostle for influence in a town on the brink of statehood. The many fabled stories and myths about the West she grew up with colliding with the messy truth her journey reveals. With this, Eleanor represents the struggle between the old and new, between East and West and while the show highlight the violence that happened in this period of time within the Indian territory and those displaced because of it, the overarching storyline within Three Forks is about a place that is falling into a new century with a promise of brighter horizons, but leaving people to wonder: for whom? Those that know how the play the game or those that recognize that the rules were never guaranteed to stay the same?

Publication Date

12-2025

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Film and Animation (MFA)

Department, Program, or Center

Film and Animation, School of

College

College of Art and Design

Advisor

Frank Deese

Advisor/Committee Member

Benjamin Coccio

Advisor/Committee Member

Kevin Bauer

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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