Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies

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http://hdl.handle.net/1903/2229

Effective July 1, 2010, the former departments of Dance and Theatre were combined to form the School of Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies.

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After Bend It Like Beckham: Soccer in 21st-Century Theatre and Performance
(2023) Strange, Jared; Harding, James; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
After Bend It Like Beckham: Soccer in 21st-Century Theatre and Performance examines how the performativity of the world’s most popular sport is “played” by various actors for the purposes of social, cultural, and political transformation. In addition to being a type of performance, sports can be considered performative in that they can enact a consequential transformation, such that a win on the field becomes a win in life. Assumptions surrounding the transformative capacities of soccer, unabashedly described by fans and stakeholders as “The Beautiful Game,” are especially potent, particularly when invested with material powers that forms the sports-industrial complex. By examining case studies ranging from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play The Wolves to exhibition matches staged by authoritarian leaders, this dissertation demonstrates how soccer’s performativity can be reconfigured advantageously in conditions extracted from actual gameplay. Dramas that spotlight sportswomen using soccer to forge greater individual and collective selves show how athletes can play against the barriers that inhibit their access to the sport, and how nuanced representations of the plight of sportswomen can play against uncritical deployments of representation that only validate success. National and sporting governments, on the other hand, can leverage the sport to reify nationalistic myths and induce participants to reconfigure social memory through acts of play that elide historical accuracy and obscure the material powers invested in the game. This dissertation arrives at an ideal time to engage debates over the “true” nature of performativity, accounting for the efficacy of gestures amidst accusations of “performative activism” and redirecting attention to the conditions that make transformation possible but are more likely to sanction superficial changes that do not threaten the status quo. Soccer’s performative capacity can thus be understood as both a source of empowerment for players inhibited by racial, gendered, and nationalistic exclusion and a concept that is easily manipulated by powerbrokers whose embeddedness within the sports-industrial complex is protected by the very systems that perpetuate extraction and exclusion.
Agents and Actors Alike: On the Hidden Theatre of Espionage
(2021) Stevens, Fraser Morris; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This PhD dissertation analyzes espionage as a form of theatre and performance. Using archival documents, comparative analysis of theatre and espionage case-studies, and the application of critical theory, espionage is revealed to be a theatrical endeavor. It is a paramount example of a phenomenon which exists at the intersection of where art and life are blurred. One that gives urgency to an understanding of how theatre may be viewed outside of its traditional framing. This study of espionage is an undertaking that delves into a history of clandestine performances ranging from Mata Hari, James O’Keefe, Virginia Hall, Kim Philby, Maria Butina, and even theatre practitioner Augusto Boal. The project explores how espionage: is defined by a dialectic of success and failure, has mirrored actor training in the preparing of agents, is reliant on the archive for its execution, is governed by a desire to control, and can be viewed as a form of theatre.
Akwantuo: Plight of the Immigrant
(2018) Braimah, Mustapha; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Akwantuo: Plight of The Immigrant was an evening-length dance concert performed March 9, 10 and 11, 2018, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree from University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies. This paper addresses the creation of the original piece, which blends African and contemporary dance with Ghanaian dance theatre. These styles have been linked to the ramifications of the development of dance in Ghana before and after independence. The project situates the choreographer’s personal experience arriving from Ghana at a US airport. This work tackles the feeling of vulnerability, injustice, frustration, humiliation, disappointment and sheer terror of being at someone else’s mercy when being denied a visa or entry into the United States of America. In sum, this paper is a documentation demonstrating the inspiration, research, movement motif, creative process, and conception of the project.
Alcine J. Wiltz III: A Lifetime of Practice
(2018-12) Kirchner, Susan; Wiltz, Alcine J.
An unpublished biography of Alcine J. Wiltz based on an oral history with Wiltz and interviews with students and colleagues. Over the course of seven chapters, the content spans from Wiltz's earliest memories of dance through to his work in 2016.
American African
(2010) Dawkins, Diedre Nyota; Khon Bradley, Karen; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
American African is the story of my maternal line of Ancestry dating back to my great- great grandmother, Mary Patmon, who lived on a Native American land reservation located in Crescent, Oklahoma. It is the story of how grief and displacement can manifest in the emotional development of future generations. American African is an exploration of Native American and African intersections through movement. This choreographic interpretation traverses through the parallel lifestyles, shared struggles of slavery, dispossession and the ultimate union of two Nations. The commonly documented union between Native American and African American -Red and Black People in this country came out of a necessity to survive under the unimaginable circumstances which they were forced to endure by White settlers in the United States. Due to the fact that Africans were brought to this unfamiliar soil and terrorized, it was imperative that they escape in order to survive and the Natives of this land helped them to do so. In so many cases, Native Americans were enslaved right alongside the Africans and as a result, life long bonds were formed. My grandmother, Dorothy Pleasant Stevens, is a product of this union. Red and Black blood runs through my veins and so many other African Americans in the United States. This thesis is a documentation of my process of researching and choreographing my family history.
Antici- An Exploration of Familiarity and Progress Through the Lens of Rocky Horror: A Theoretical Design
(2022) Verrett, Taylor Kennedy; Mezzocchi, Jared; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis work focuses on a hypothetical design for a production of the Rocky Horror Show. The subject matter of the design is inspired by classical works of art history and the connotations that come with the iconography of these images. The design utilizes assets that are familiar to the audiences to create a new visual that is approved by the cult following of Rocky Horror.
An Antigone of Dying Sunsets and Buried Flames: Offering Voice Through Light
(2018) Martin, Brandi Danielle; MacDevitt, Brian; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The purpose of this thesis is to provide research, supporting paperwork, and production photographs that document the lighting design for the University of Maryland - College Park, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ production of Antigone by Sophocles, translated by Brendan Kennelly. This thesis contains the following: research images collected to develop and visually communicate ideas about color, texture, intensity, form, composition, and mood to the production team; preliminary and final organization of desired equipment to execute the lighting design; a full set of drafting plates and supplementary paperwork used to communicate the organization and placement of lighting equipment to the master electrician; and magic sheets and cue lists used as organizational tools for the lighting designer during the tech process. Archival production photographs are included as documentation of the completed design.
The Antitheatrical Body: Puritans and Performance in Early Modern England, 1577-1620
(2008-04-22) du Toit, Simon William; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The antitheatrical pamphlets published in Shakespeare's England provide an excellent view of the early modern religious engagement with the stage. However, critics have discussed the antitheatrical pamphlets most often by examining the theology or psychology they seem to represent. This study offers an interdisciplinary approach, as it stands at the shifting boundaries between performance studies, religious studies, and theatre historiography. It offers a close reading of puritan religious experience in the ethnographic grain, reading the struggle between the puritan and the stage through the lens of a contemporary discourse of embodiment: early modern humoral theory. Puritan practitioners of "spiritual physick" appropriated humoral physiology and integrated it with Calvinist theology to produce the embodied authority of prophetic performative speech. This study's central claim is that the struggle between the antitheatrical writers and the stage was a social drama, in which each side fought for social control of the authority of performative speech. I suggest that performance of prophetic speech is the primary signifier of puritan identity in English puritan culture. What distinctively identifies the puritan body is not physiological difference, but cultural practice, visible in the bodily dispositions constructed in puritan culture. The puritan body performs a paradox: it is closed, bridled, contained, and ordered; and it is open, permeable, passionately disclosing, and subject to dangerous motions and disorder. The puritan body knows itself as double. It is alienated from the flesh, and therefore constructs itself in a liminal process of becoming. I document evidence of a humorally grounded logic of practice within puritan culture; trace the outlines of the puritan body through the antitheatrical literature; and finally observe the social role of the antitheatrical pamphlets in the market for argument. The antitheatrical pamphlets order the worldly environment, shaping time and place to privilege the redemptive hegemony they construct. However, the pamphlets' engagement with the market for cheap godly print gradually served to etiolate their ritual authority. While the antitheatrical pamphlets served as "argument" that performed social distinctions, they also mark a transition in the public representation of puritanism, beginning the shift towards the carnivalesque body of the Stage Puritan.
Apple Falling
(2013) Brown, Graham; Warren, Anne; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Apple Falling is a 55-minute dance theatre performance work in which the lives of seven individuals intersect as they interact with their familial histories, musing over the stories and characters that have, over generations, shaped who they are and who they will become. This artifact details the process of creating the work, from inception to performance, with reflections on its successes and failures. It outlines my foray into the philosophies and methodologies of Theatre, and my integration of this new knowledge into my creative process.
THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY: A STUDY OF LITURGICAL AND THEATRICAL PRACTICES IN BYZANTIUM
(2006-07-23) White, Andrew Walker; Hildy, Franklin J.; Majeska, George P.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This study attempts to fill a substantial gap in our knowledge of theatre history by focusing on the Orthodox ritual aesthetic and its relationship with traditional theatrical practice in the Eastern Roman Empire - also known as Byzantium. Through a review of spatial practices, performance aesthetics and musical practice, and culminating in a case study of the Medieval Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how the Orthodox Church responded to the theatre, and determine whether the theatre influenced the development of its ritual aesthetic. Because of the well-documented rapprochement between church and theatre in the west, this study also tries to determine whether there was a similar reconciliation in the Orthodox east. From the Early Byzantine period onward, conduct of the Orthodox Liturgy was rooted in a ritual aesthetic that avoided direct imitation or representation. This Orthodox ritual aesthetic influenced every aspect of the Liturgy, from iconography to chant to liturgical dance, and involved a rejection of practices that, in the Church's view, would draw too much attention to the material or artistic aspects of ritual. Theatrical modes of representation were consistently avoided and condemned as anathema. Even in the Middle Ages, when Catholics began to imitate Jesus at the altar and perform representations of biblical episodes using actors, realistic settings and special effects, Orthodox hierarchs continued to reject theatrical modes of performance. One possible exception to this rule is a Late Byzantine rite identified by western scholars as a "liturgical drama" - the Office of the Three Children. But a detailed reconstruction of its performance elements reveals that it was quite different in its aesthetics from Medieval Catholic practice. Some of the Office's instructions, however, lend themselves to a theatrical interpretation; and the instability of the Office's manuscript tradition, as seen in five extant versions, reveals strong disagreements about whether and how to include many of its key visual and musical elements.
ATOMIC-AGE COMEDY: THE CREATION OF THE TRAMP'S NEW WORLD
(2013) Jansen, Robert Michael; Felbain, Leslie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACT Title of Document: ATOMIC-AGE COMEDY: THE CREATION OF THE TRAMP'S NEW WORLD Robert Jansen, MFA in Performance, 2013 Thesis Directed By: Leslie Felbain, School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies Abstract The Tramp's New World Written and Adapted by: Rob Jansen From his office atop the 50th floor of the Chrysler Building, American Pulitzer Prize winning author James Agee struggles to complete a screenplay entitled The Tramp's New World--which tells the story of Charlie Chaplin's "Tramp" character as the lone survivor of a super atomic blast. Agee enacts the Tramp's tale of survival amidst the backdrop of a devastated New York City. Using projection, physical comedy, music, and silent film technique The Tramp's New World adapts a lost screenplay for the stage described as "so dark it was without precedent" and tells the story of a writer's struggle to find redemption through his art. The play explores the question: can a man's desire to create be a match for his proclivity towards self-destruction?
Beyond Resistance: Performing Postdramatic Protest
(2022) Scrimer, Victoria Lynn; Harding, James M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
As its point of departure, this dissertation takes stock of the fact that activist performances like sit-ins, marches, banner drops, rallies, and occupations are deeply informed by dramatic theatre in both the way activists design these actions and in the way audiences read them. The dissertation argues that these performative arrangements, narratives, images, and tropes are naturalized to the extent that they have come to constitute a sort of Gramscian common sense that can limit our ability to imagine other ways of thinking and being. The dissertation seeks a conceptual alternative to those limitations. Combining performance analysis, interviews with artists and activists, and autoethnographic accounts of my own experiences as an environmental activist, the dissertation illustrates the limitations of dramatic representation in activist performance and then explores how Hans-Thies Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theatre—theatre that eschews the hallmarks of dramatic theatre—might provide alternative models for activism and new ways to talk about and understand the successes and failures of activist performances as they play out in the 21st century.
Birds of a Feather
(2010) Gruber, April Lee; Warren, Anne; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The noble crane pervades in April Gruber's MFA concert Birds of a Feather. Drawing movement from the majestic creature's aerial rituals and organic rhythms, the evening provides a bird's eye view of life's transient nature and the foundational roots that call us homeward. The concert features Gruber's performance in her own choreography, entitled Nestling, as well as Dawn Springer's work Dreams of Flight.
BIRTHMARK
(2004) Gongora, Anthony; Bradley, Karen; Dance; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland
BIRTHMARK is a choreographic journey, inspired by a personal confrontation with kaposi's sarcoma and the moment of realizing ultimate recovery. The dance is divided into six sections, beginning with my depression and fears at diagnosis of the extreme form of the herpes virus. The next sections travel through pondering "Why Me;" expanding my spiritualization and embracing my friends; finding respect for my body and the world around me; realizing the profound changes for and in me; and, finally, experiencing hope, euphoria, that I was now given a second chance. The fifty-minute dance production is successful not only because of my vision and choreography. The outstanding performance danced by my talented cast, the ideas for costume patterns and construction offered by my luminous costume designer, the concepts for lighting and props suggested by my eminent technical director, and the continuous encouragement of my advisor, contributed to the production's triumph.
BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD
(2023) Ward, Cyrah Louise; Davis, Crystal U; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD is a 30-minute multimodal performative meditation birthed at the crossroads of spirituality and sensuality. Migrating the audience through jazz worlds saturated with ancestral choreographies, storytelling, and spoken words, BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD acts as a divine medium converging the past and the present. Carefully informed by embodied practices within the Hoodoo spiritual system, BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD submerges viewers into a Black cultural landscape where the sacred and secular collide. BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD directed by Cyrah L. Ward premiered as an installation on Monday, November 14, 2022, and an embodied performance on Thursday, November 17, 2022. The installation designed by Cyrah L. Ward in collaboration with scenic designer Sarah Beth Hall features a series of found sacred objects, original digital art collages, and poetry. The embodied performance of BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD features choreography by Cyrah L. Ward in collaboration with Ronya-Lee Anderson, scenic design by Sarah Beth Hall, audio engineering by Cyrah L. Ward, sound design by Veronica J. Lancaster, lighting design by Luis Garcia, costume design by Ashlynne Ludwig, projection design by Deja Collins, and stage managing by Safiya Muthaliff. This document serves as a written performance that creatively travels readers through the energetic, spiritual, compositional, and choreographic development of BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD.
BLACK MADONNA AND MISS AMERICA: IN THE STREETS, ON THE STAGE AND IN THE CHURCH
(2020) Anderson, Ronya-Lee; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The black female body is a political body that inhabits the collective imagination of a nation. This body constantly negotiates a multiplicity of meanings that have life and death consequences and in turn teach America about herself. What does it look like for this body to take up space? As the black female body navigates the streets, the stage, the church, both private and public space, what concessions must be made? Black Madonna and Miss America is a choreographic and critical investigation of socio-political happenings in conversation with the positioning of the black female icon in the streets, on the stage and in the church. It is cinematic in nature, employing a familiar series of still and moving images tied to a complex historical canon. Black Madonna and Miss America tackles the tension between the public and private; the doing and being of the black female iconic body. The work confronts the worship of the black female body in popular culture; worship undone in the political and economic treatment of that same body. In the making of the work, theory and practice have been lovers, sometimes in harmony, other times, at odds. The practice of making the work in the body challenged and was challenged by the theoretical work of thinking through and researching related issues; some tangental and others glaringly present. What does the performance protest of Colin Rand Kaepernick have in common with black female bodies engaged in their own political and social choreography on stage? How does #BlackGirlMagic both illuminate the work and threaten its potential potency? What does the work borrow from the Black Church and the Black Lives Matter Movement?
THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF THE AMERICAN SHAKESPEARE CENTER: ORIGINAL PRACTICES AND THE ACTORS' RENAISSANCE SEASON IN STAUNTON, VA
(2010) Townsend, Emily Catherine; Hildy, Franklin J; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA prides itself on a history of producing the plays of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries in a manner that borrows certain staging conditions of the Early Modern period. With the inception of the yearly Actors' Renaissance Season in 2005, the ASC has taken a significant step further into the world of original staging conditions by allowing its company of veteran actors to produce the plays of the season without directors or designers in only a matter of days. While the Renaissance Season is built on a scholarly foundation and must carefully juggle claims of producing "authentic" Shakespeare, it is ultimately striving towards its own interpretation of authenticity. This thesis asks what the contribution of the Actors' Renaissance Season is to the broader conversation about Original Practices Shakespearean performance techniques and examines its unique combination of OP preparatory and performance style.
Building Publics: The Early History of the New York Shakespeare Festival
(2018) Sheaffer, Adam; Hildy, Franklin J; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation explores the New York Shakespeare Festival/Public Theater’s earliest history, with a special focus in the company’s evolving use of the rhetoric and concept of “public.” As founder Joseph Papp noted early in the theater’s history, they struggled to function as a “private organization engaged in public work.” To mitigate the challenges of this struggle, the company pursued potential audiences and publics for their theatrical and cultural offerings in a variety of spaces on the cityscape, from Central Park to neighborhood parks and common spaces to a 19th century historic landmark. In documenting and exploring the festival’s development and perambulations, this dissertation suggests that the festival’s position as both a private and public-minded organization presented as many opportunities as it did challenges. In this way, company rhetoric surrounding “public-ness” emerged as a powerful strategy for the company’s survival and growth, embodied most apparently by their current moniker as The Public Theater.
BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK: A LIGHTING DESIGN
(2023) Reynolds, Heather; Chandrashaker, Amith; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This thesis provides documentation and reflection on the lighting design for the University of Maryland - College Park School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies production of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage. This thesis contains a written explanation of the design process and approach; visual research used to help communicate design intent to the production team; drafting plates used to convey the placement and organization of the lighting equipment; magic sheets, discussion of the organizational and communication tools for the lighting design team; a discussion of the effects of COVID-19 on the production and design process; and documentation of the creation of the “Belle of New Orleans” film required by the script. Included production photographs document the completed design. This production held two preview performances on October 7th and 9th and opened on October 13th, 2022.
“By The Way, Meet Vera Stark”: An Exploration of Process, Film, and Collaboration
(2023) Collins, Deja; Mezzocchi, Jared; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The following thesis documents my design process and the discoveries I made as the projection designer for the production of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark, directed by Scott Reese and Alvin Mayes, and the cinematographer for its short film Belle of New Orleans. The production opened on October 7th, 2022, in the Kay Theatre at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at the University of Maryland.

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