UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item "In This You Street Vicinity": Building a Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., 1903-1912(2024) Jamison, Bridget; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The decade of 1903-1912 was a period of great creation in the U Street neighborhood of Washington, D.C., the result of social conditions that had emerged through Reconstruction and beyond. The institutions that were built to house Black Washington’s cultural activities in this time were sites of conflict between contingents of Washingtonians, both Black and white, who held competing visions for the future of their city and communities. Although different principles and priorities determined the development and operation of different buildings, such as True Reformers’ Hall, the Twelfth Street Y.M.C.A., and the Howard Theatre, the concentration of cultural institutions in this one location produced a coherent idea of U Street that would carry into future decades. U Street at the beginning of the twentieth century was the local creation of people who were involved in national discussions on politics, religion, society, and economics and engaged with what was new and modern in arts and entertainment. Even before it became a famous theater district, U Street was an expression of Black business and Black artistry and the aspirations that the people there had for the future.Item The Purpose of a Labor Theatre: Industrial Democracy and the Union Theatre of Detroit, 1946-1949(2024) Lapinski, Margaret; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1946, the Union Theatre of Detroit was established as a project to broadcast “labor’s” aims and achievements. Sponsored by the Educational and Recreational Departments of the UAW, the Union Theatre quickly became part of the UAW’s educational programming to help educate and politicize workers on social issues like racial discrimination. This thesis seeks to investigate the ways in which the Union Theatre labored on behalf of an industrial democratic political program that emphasized deploying both economic and political action to achieve the goals of “labor.” In addition to providing a brief history of the Union Theatre, I use methods from performance studies and theatre studies to analyze archival material and decipher the ways in which plays functioned as both recreational activities and educational opportunities for union members to rehearse the tactics and strategies of labor organizing. I argue that, post-WWII, theatre and theatricality (loosely defined as the conventions of theatre) were deployed as an organizing tool to agitate and educate union members during a period of theatre history that is characterized in theatre historiography as “politically apathetic.” In this thesis, I ask “What was the social link between the Union Theatre and institutions like the UAW?” and seek to uncover how cultural work labors in broader social and political movements like the American labor movement.Item What's Playing? Immediacy, Authenticity, and Playfulness in the Work of Christophe Honoré, Ahmed Madani, and Faustine Noguès(2024) Muravchik, Madeline; Eades, Caroline; French Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Christophe Honoré’s Le Ciel de Nantes (2021), Ahmed Madani’s Incandescences (2021), and Faustine Noguès’ Surprise parti (2019) represent a new wave of French playwrights who have rejected postmodern aesthetics and have intentionally returned to traditional classic French theater techniques - immediacy, authenticity, and playfulness - in order to create compelling theater for contemporary French audiences despite being confronted with the development of film and social media. These works rely specifically on the synchronous co-presence of performer and spectator. They create intimate portraits of different aspects of French life, drawing on material from both auto/biography and fiction. At their core, these elements are used to explore liveness, whether thematically by looking at an array of human connections (self to family, self to community, self to society), or artistically by exploring the nature of representation and play on stage.Item Popular Theatre in Iran: Critical Perspectives on The Historiography of Lalehzari Theatre(2024) Haeri, Q-mars Mazandarani; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)By the mid-1950s a class of performers occupied the theatres, concert halls, and nightclubs of the Lalehzar entertainment district in Tehran. Many of these performers had abandoned their lives in small villages in faraway provinces. Many had come from poor neighborhoods in Tehran to pursue their dreams for theatre, dance, and music. Their diverse and varied performances known as “Lalehzari” (adjectival form) made deep and affective connections to the audience in the Lalehzar district. For the first time, a great population of Tehran’s spectators, who were often characterized as “uncultured” by various scholars, had finally found a body of performances that they could relate to, those that could speak to their struggles and sorrows, and that responded to political and social issues within their society.This dissertation considers the “Lalehzari” performances of the 1950s and 1960, the ways in which these performances originated in the 1940s, the ways in which they subverted the status quo, and the ways in which they have been described, theorized, and historicized in Iranian historical studies of theatre. Major theatre histories have been written with a Marxist lens by writers who had a relationship with the Tudeh communist party. As a result, such histories tend to emphasize, admire, and affirm so-called “committed theatre” and dismiss, denounce, and stigmatize Lalehzari popular theatre. Hence, there is a major gap in the available literature that represents Iranian modern cultural history as one-sided and political. This is not to deny that culture is always political but at a time when knowledge of Middle Eastern cultures in the US is limited to political discourse alone, an academic endeavor of the cultural history of Iran is crucial for understanding this multifaceted society. This dissertation addresses fundamental questions about how notions like immigration and class challenge the ways in which we think about culture and how cultural history may be written without erasures. To reconstruct the history of Lalehzari theatre, I am organizing my dissertation into these chapters: Lalehzar’s unique geographic location in Tehran and the history of its theatre houses (chapter 1), the improvisatory popular performers of the 1940s and how they gained access to Lalehzar (chapter 2), the stigmatization of Lalehzar (chapter 3), Racial depiction in performances in the district (chapter 4). Each of these chapters has a historical part that explains the cause and effect of events, the continuation and changes of performance styles, and the operation of theatre houses. Each chapter also offers a close reading and analysis of a few artists whose lives and performances reflect the class tensions between the Lalehzar district and the outside theatre scene. I am looking at the ways in which history unfolded and also how it affects us today, therefore, the dissertation addresses the preservation quest for Lalehzar theatres (chapter 5) and how lasting narratives about Lalehzar shaped the Iranian culture today (conclusion).Item The White Arm in the Smoke: The Meaning of Theatrical Violence on the Victorian Stage(2023) Kaleba, Casey Dean; Hildy, Franklin J; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This PhD dissertation examines Victorian theatrical combat on the London stage to place it in both historical and cultural context. By first establishing a possible dance-based origin for stage combat, the paper explores the overlapping modes of practice in different forms of popular and elite entertainments in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as they influenced the development of historically inspired movement. Using archival documents, literary analysis of stage fights, physical culture and gender studies, the study aims to contribute original research to the field of stage combat history and propose new theoretic lenses with which to examine historical practice. The paper discusses the relationship between dueling as cultural habit and representations in dramatic literature, as well as the influence of changing patterns in physical culture. Finally, this dissertation examines the role of spectacle theatre and acting theory in the development of new Modernist ideas of representing sword fights on stage.Item The Songs of Her Possibilities: Black Women-Authored Musicals from the Nineteenth Century to the Present(2023) Ealey, Jordan Alexandria; Chatard Carpenter, Faedra; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Songs of Her Possibilities: Black Women Authored Musicals from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, examines Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Vinnette Carroll, Micki Grant, and Kirsten Childs as black women creators of music theatre and their use of the form for social, political, and creative interventions. In so doing, I argue that these creators employ the form of the musical as a site for black feminist intellectual production through dramaturgical strategies in playwriting, composition, and direction. My project is animated by these major questions: How do Hopkins, Hurston, Grant, Carroll, and Childs employ the form of the musical to significant sociopolitical ends? How do their respective musicals creatively shape how musical theatre is researched, taught, and circulated? And finally, how do the black women creators at the center of this study reject, remake, and revise musical forms to challenge, critique, and change the overdetermined boundaries of the artistry and scholarship of musical theatre?In musical theatre, there is often an adherence to a strict dramaturgy of integration; that is, the dialogue, music, choreography, and other elements of a given musical must be perfectly uniformed. Black women musical theatre creators, however, are not bound to this dramaturgy and challenge it. I contend that this is accomplished through what I call strategic dissonance—a black feminist dramaturgical strategy that makes use of disintegrated and disjointed elements as an artistic method. This method is drawn from their material realities as black women (and the multidirectional nature of navigating black womanhood) to reflect the realities of black life and propose new ways of living. The project uses a significant amount of research from different archival sites such as the Library of Congress, Fisk University, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Currently, no manuscript exists that explores and examines this under-theorized and under-documented history; thus, my project intervenes in the invisibilization of these musicals from the historical narrative of American musical theatre. Therefore, The Songs of Her Possibilities simultaneously argues for the significance of black women’s musical theatre for black feminist worldmaking capabilities.Item GENDER AND SEXUAL DISSIDENCE IN REGGAETÓN: THE POLITICS OF CUIR PERFORMANCE IN THE HISPANIC CARIBBEAN(2023) Farnell, Lauren; Marshall, Caitlin; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Global reggaetón superstar Bad Bunny has performed in traditionally “female” clothes, worn nail polish, and kissed men on the international stage, but has never named his identity explicitly. Many have taken to the internet to call him, among many other celebrities a “queer baiter .” With US representational politics and queer people in the spotlight – this thesis wonders how homonormativity and neo-imperial respectability politics fueled these queer-baiting discourses. This thesis aims to tackle the contemporary debates surrounding racialized minoritarian subjects in reggaetón who are constantly caught in discourses of “too queer” or “not queer enough.” These queers frequently under colonial or neo-imperial rule, negotiate the boundaries of American homonormativity and obsession with “outness.” This thesis takes up the idea of “queerbaiting” and questions, “what happens when people outside the homo-“norms” perform their queerness in a way that is not necessarily legible to other global queers?” Utilizing methods from performance, queer, and Latine and Caribbean studies, I argue that we need new understandings of what it means to be queer. Using case studies from the reggaetón genre of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, I argue that performances by Bad Bunny, Tokischa, and Ivy Queen negotiate, performances of queerness that exceed those of US imperial homonormativity. Intervention statement: this redefines how we come to understand our own queerness and futures and how we understand the most popular global music genre.Item Daggers of the Mind: Performing Madness and Mental Disorder on the Early English Stage(2023) Rio, Melanie; Passannante, Gerard; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Madness is such a popular device in early modern English drama that extant playscripts are littered with stage directions indicating that a character should enter “like a madman” or simply, “mad.” Because the public playhouse required the psychosomatic participation of actors and observers from every social class and category, it served as a unique cultural laboratory in which to explore questions of cognition, embodiment, identity, and interiority. Madness as a theatrical device also offers unique insight into the challenge of “performing” an invisible disability. This dissertation examines representations of madness in the early English playhouse—primarily in the works of works Shakespeare, but also considering works by Fletcher, Webster, Middleton, Armin, and others—as well as extradramatic primary sources such as court cases and physicians’ notebooks in order to demonstrate how intersecting indices of identity influence the construction and interpretation of early modern cognitive disorder.Item CIVIC DRAMATURGY: CULTURAL SPACE, ARTISTIC LABOR, AND PERFORMANCES OF URBAN PLANNING IN 21ST CENTURY CHICAGO(2022) Thomas, LaRonika; Harding, James; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation develops a theory of “civic dramaturgy.” Civic dramaturgy is a process of performing identity through changes to and impacts on the built environment, as well as a method of analyzing and contextualizing those performances to better understand the multiple modes of identity expression that make up a specific place, in the case of this dissertation, that place is the city of Chicago. Civic dramaturgy joins theories of “performance and the city” together with theatre history and urban studies to examine cultural space, cultural policy, performances of urban planning, and the ways in which artistic labor is used by individuals, corporations, and governments in non-representational performances of civic and urban identity in the United States. This study first establishes a working definition of civic dramaturgy, tracing the development of the ideas of the “civic” and “dramaturgy” through western theatre history, as well as examining other theories significant to urban planning, critical space theory, spatial representations of gender and race, and performance of cities. Dramaturgy involved four main areas of practice: analysis of plot structure, relationship between artist and audience, locality and spatial awareness, and contextualization. Each of chapters one through four examine an aspect of Chicago through one of these practices to build toward this definition of civic dramaturgy. I identified the city of Chicago as the site of study for this work because of its history of planning the built environment and its robust theatre history, including the way in which its theatre has been intertwined with social and spatial movements through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. In addition to an examination of the development of the city and its theatre, civic dramaturgy requires an analysis of the ways in which artistic labor co-creates civic identity, the social space of the city, and the built environment. In particular, the work of Theaster Gates, an artist and planner working on the south side of Chicago, provides a poignant example of the ways cultural planning, performance, and labor work to craft a civic identity; and the structure of these interwoven performances are examples of civic dramaturgy. Finally, the performance of the digital space of the city is also an important component of civic dramaturgy and the fourth chapter breaks down the ways in which actor and audience relationships manifest through sensory-inscribed bodies in performance and planning of the built environment. This study builds upon existing scholarship that posits dramaturgy as a way to understand performance, architecture, policy-making, and politics, extending the use of the structural and spatial concepts of dramaturgy beyond the rehearsal room, the stage, and the site-specific performance, in order to craft a more comprehensive means by which to understand performance and the city, and providing an example of a kind of dramaturgically-based analysis that may also be used when looking at all kinds of urban spaces and phenomena, and which may be theorized as “civic dramaturgy.”Item Staging the Middle Ages: History and Form in Early Modern English Drama(2022) Daley, Liam Thomas; Robertson, Kellie; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Early modern conceptions of what it meant to be “medieval” continue to shape our own conception of what it means to be “modern.” Writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries claimed to separate historical fact from literary fiction more effectively than their medieval forebears. And yet, many widespread ideas about the Middle Ages that persist to this day—including the idea of a “Middle Ages” at all—are the fictional inventions of early modern writers, from chroniclers and antiquarians, to poets and playwrights. Focusing on the affordances and limitations of dramatic form, this dissertation examines how enduringly popular visions of the Middle Ages crafted by Shakespeare and other early modern playwrights (including John Bale, Thomas Hughes, and Elizabeth Cary) still inform our historical understanding. These writers shaped their revisionist historiographical narratives for the Renaissance stage in a host of generic guises, not only in Elizabethan chronicle history plays, but also in secularized morality plays, Senecan tragedies, and closet drama. These early modern depictions of the medieval past gave new life to older dramatic forms characteristic of both classical and medieval theatre, such as the chorus and various forms of theatrical spectacle, while also employing new formal strategies such as the soliloquy, the dumbshow, and the play-within-a-play. All the plays examined here—including John Bale’s Kynge Johan, Shakespeare’s King John and Richard II, Thomas Hughes’s The Misfortunes of Arthur, and Elizabeth Cary’s The Tragedy of Mariam—engage in self-conscious medievalism. Remediating earlier chronicle accounts as well as contemporary historiographical controversies (or “battles-of-the-books”), these plays fashion new fictions of when the Middle Ages ended and when modernity began. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of modern dramatic medievalism in Tony Kushner’s twentieth-century stage epic, Angels in America, a play that witnesses the continuing power of premodern dramatic and historical models as tools for re imagining ideas of national and cultural identity. Examining the formal strategies employed by all these playwrights provides insight into the ways that readers and writers have understood the medieval past, the modern present, and the shape of history itself.