Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item “I, TOO, AM AMERICA”: HAMILTON, AN AMERICAN MUSICAL(2017) Ridley, Leticia Lashell; Carpenter, Faedra C; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“I, Too, Am America” is a critical study of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical phenomenon Hamilton (2015), which is currently running on Broadway at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in New York. Through my scholarly analysis of Hamilton (that is, through a dramaturgical examination of the musical’s book and lyrics, embodied performance, production characteristics, casting practices, and public reception—among other elements), this thesis explores the overarching question: How does Hamilton wield the body of its performers to interrogate, disrupt, and reconfigure dominant narratives of American history and identity? Specifically, how does Miranda’s musical interrogate the way power is ascribed and/or re-inscribed through representations of race, gender, and nationhood? By engaging with Hamilton as a relevant and immediate historical artifact, this interdisciplinary thesis examines the ways in which Hamilton interrogates and artfully challenges the cultural power whiteness has in erroneously defining the parameters of American identity.Item THEATRE PRODUCTION AS EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING: THE SUMMER MUSICAL PROGRAM AT THE SITAR CENTER FOR ARTS EDUCATION(2011) Warheit, Emily Jane; Meer, Laurie F; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent scholarship on educational theatre has tended to focus on process-oriented drama and on programs that deal with participant's personal identity. These programs have become regarded as the standard for drama that benefits both children and the community. However, programs like the summer musical at the Sitar Center for the Arts, though not based in the work of applied theatre theorists, have notable educational effects for participants. The Sitar's Center's theatre program is highly product oriented and focuses on the Western theatre cannon, specifically Eurocentric musical theatre, making it traditional in structure and aesthetic in focus. In this study, I utilize educational and performance ethnography to examine the effects of the theatre program and the ways in which it helps fulfill the greater mission of the center. In addition, I explore the relationship between more traditional programs and applied theatre methods in contemporary theatre education.Item "'You Can't Get a Man With a Gun' and Other Life Lessons: Biography and Musical Theatre(2008-05-05) Joyce, Valerie Michelle; Nathans, Heather S.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation compares the versions of Annie Oakley's persona that have been presented in American popular culture from 1885 to 1999 and analyzes the startling similarity to the state of womanhood in America across the same period. It also examines musical theatre's ideological potential, gender problems that emerge at particular historical moments, and the reciprocal relationship between audience and cultural context. Annie Get Your Gun and its revivals function as a case study that reveals the complicity of musical theatre in advancing certain agendas. Because the creators and producers molded the biography of Annie Oakley for different ideological purposes that suited different audiences, the various versions are particularly useful for comparative analysis and they offer insights into the way the present shapes and reshapes the past. This investigation aims to identify what each production teaches us about American cultural life and to reveal and describe the ideological operations of musical theatre in order to establish its significance in the larger landscape of American popular culture. In its many reincarnations, Annie Get Your Gun's ideological agendas primarily address American female spectators, millions of whom have watched it, largely uncritically. It is my contention that over the course of the late-nineteenth century and throughout the twentieth century, several artists, from Oakley and Buffalo Bill, to Irving Berlin and Dorothy Fields, to Graciella Danielle and Peter Stone, have used the life story of Annie Oakley in order to convey specific ideological content and to reflect the moral views and behavior of women in the audience. In 1946, the musical collaborators took Oakley's story and crafted a message that would resonate with post-World War II female spectators. Through this investigation, I have identified changes that have been made to Oakley's biography and to the original Annie Get Your Gun script and read them in light of their cultural moment in order to offer possible reasons why these changes appealed to particular audiences; essentially, why spectators forgive and even applaud the factual omissions and changes that occur. A non-redacted version of this dissertation with the images is available in the University of Maryland library.Item SOMEWHERE THERE’S MUSIC: NANCY HAMILTON, THE OLD GIRLS’ NETWORK, AND THE AMERICAN MUSICAL THEATRE OF THE 1930S AND 1940S(2005-04-15) Rothman, Korey R.; Nathans, Heather S; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Nancy Hamilton, a Broadway lyricist, playwright, actress, screenwriter, and Academy Award-winning filmmaker, is an important unsung figure of the twentieth century musical theatre. Although she is now remembered chiefly as the lyricist of the song "How High the Moon" and, in the recent drive to recover gay and lesbian history, the life-long romantic partner of "first lady of the American stage," Katharine Cornell, Hamilton was a successful lyricist of the intimate revue, a genre of musical theatre that flourished during the 1930s. Her intimate revues One for the Money (1939) and Two for the Show (1940) launched the careers of luminaries of stage and screen, including Alfred Drake, Gene Kelly, and Betty Hutton, and Three to Make Ready (1946), which featured Ray Bolger, ran for an impressive 323 performances. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hamilton maintained a constant presence as employer or employee on Broadway, and it appeared that she thrived by surrounding herself with an Old Girls' Network of women with whom she maintained overlapping professional and romantic relationships. This previously unchronicled Old Girls' Network, which included women such as Katharine Hepburn, Beatrice Lillie, and Mary Martin, countered the established Old Boys' Network of popular entertainment and launched the careers of many well-known women performers, producers, directors, composers, and lyricists. Yet, even with the support of this network, Hamilton could barely sustain her career after the 1940s. This dissertation considers the successes and failures of Hamilton's career and suggests that Hamilton offers a fascinating case study that allows the historian to map a larger network of women on Broadway. The dissertation further considers how the story of Nancy Hamilton and her circle offers historians an opportunity to expand their analysis of American musical theatre to explore how a woman could use the "bottom-most" aspects of her identity -- her gender and (at times) sexuality -- to create a subaltern network and establish a career on Broadway. It further encourages musical theatre scholars to re-think the ways in which they document and tell the history of women in the musical theatre.