Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item TRANSFORMING THE BEAST: THE THEATRE LABORATORIES OF THE “DISNEY RENAISSANCE” 1984-1994(2021) Mandracchia, Christen; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study investigates the ways that theatre professionals brought significant changes to the Walt Disney Company, from 1984-1994, in a period affectionately referred to, in popular discourses, as the “Disney Renaissance.” These individuals, including Peter Schneider, Linda Woolverton, Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, Bob McTyre, Ron Logan, Rob Roth, Matt West, Stan Meyer, and others came from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theatres, and local theatres, and represented a wide-cross section of theatrical disciplines, including production management, stage management, playwrighting, musical theatre, producing, directing, choreography, and design. In their respective Company divisions, such as animation and theme parks, they worked to transform their area of the corporation into theatre laboratories, where a series of experiments occurred. These tests challenged the lines of demarcation between theatre, animation, and theme park mediums, between the individual and the collective, between marginalization and the mainstream, and between spectatorship and participation. In 1994, these efforts culminated in the production of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on Broadway. Through a combination of archival evidence and interviews with the surviving subjects listed above, my findings demonstrate a direct link between their theatrical knowledge and practices to the rapid growth and unprecedented financial, popular, and critical success, which the Walt Disney Company enjoyed during this era. Written in a year of Covid-19, when the American theatre industry was decimated, this dissertation tells the stories of theatre makers who, over thirty years ago, ventured into the non-theatrical contexts of Disney and transformed the culture, values, and ways of doing things at the large Company, making it a more collaborative, more empathetic, more innovative, and bolder place than it was before. In this way “Transforming the Beast” refers not only to the pivotal moment of Beauty and the Beast in on film, the theme park stage, or Broadway, but the value of theatrical knowledge in transforming a large entity like Disney to do better as a business, as a creative space, and as a collective of people.Item Andrea Sansovino and the Question of Modernism in Sixteenth-Century Italian Art(2015) Langer, Lara R.; Gill, Meredith J; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines major artworks by the Tuscan artist Andrea Sansovino (c.1467/70-1529), and his role in the development of sculpture at the turn of the sixteenth century. Sansovino worked from the 1490s until his death in 1529, specializing in large tombs and altars. Amid a growing population of wealthy ecclesiastics, some chose to promote their legacies with grand funerary chapels and memorials. Displays of wealth and power went hand in hand with ritual, performance, and spectacle. The goal of this study is to establish how intersections among sculpture, funerary design, and cultural developments during the papacy of Julius II (r.1503-13) brought forth innovations in the art of Sansovino, which influenced his contemporaries and later artists. Establishing Sansovino as a pioneering artist will challenge previous scholarship classifying him as a typical promoter of fifteenth-century Florentine artistic traditions. To investigate the aesthetic of Sansovino, this discussion avoids the strict categorizations “classical” or “modern,” which may limit our understanding of his exceptionality. Under the methodological framework of social art history, considering artistic practice, collaboration, patronage, and ritual, this study gives special attention to Sansovino’s masterpieces, the twin tombs at Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. Sansovino’s approach to tomb design and sculpted altarpieces is apparent in his rethinking of wall monuments, the importance of the body in his designs, and his reinvention of classical ornamentation. Analysis of Sansovino’s works offers a nuanced comparison of his art with the works of his colleagues. Chapter One introduces Sansovino and the historical context within which he lived and worked. Chapter Two explores Sansovino’s attributed altarpieces and early influences. Chapter Three focuses on the Popolo tombs as the embodiments of Sansovino’s interest in large-scale complex monuments and their role in the celebration of art and ceremony. Chapter Four highlights Sansovino’s participation in the massive marble screen of the Santa Casa at Loreto Cathedral, and argues that Sansovino devised the barrier as a more integrated part of the church and the congregant’s acts of devotion. Chapter Five reflects on those artists who followed Sansovino’s ambitious formal experiments in tomb and altar production.Item Imitation and Adaptation in Istoriato Maiolica: A Case-Study of the Anne de Montmorency Service, 1535(2014) Dupertuis, Lindsay Leigh; Gill, Meredith J.; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines the production of narrative (istoriato) maiolica ceramics in sixteenth-century Urbino, particularly the practice of adapting pre-existing woodcuts and engravings to the painted scenes on the surfaces of these objects. I perform this analysis through a case-study of the Anne de Montmorency tableware service, manufactured in the workshop of Guido Durantino in 1535. Istoriato maiolica studies have often included the art-historical convention of the early modern artist as a solitary individual or genius. I will destabilize this trope by focusing on a prominent service for a powerful aristocrat that was nonetheless designed by anonymous artisans. I assert that the unique circumstances of the duchy of Urbino enabled artisans to compose narrative paintings of classical stories within the confines of their own workshop. With this in mind, I analyze the processes and design practices of these artisans through their products, and offer new conclusions about their compositional choices.Item Staged Magic in Early English Drama(2013) Lellock, Jasmine Shay; Cartwright, Kent; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In late medieval and early modern England, magic was everywhere. Although contested, occult beliefs and practices flourished among all classes of people, and they appeared regularly as a subject of early English drama. My dissertation focuses on staged magic in early English drama, demonstrating the ways in which it generates metacritical commentary. It argues that magic in drama serves more than just a symbolic function, but rather, some early English drama saw itself as performing a kind of magic that was also efficacious. To this end, this project theorizes that drama participated in forms of contemporary magic that circulated at the time. This dissertation focuses on representations of magic in early English drama, specifically in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament (ca. 1471), Robert Greene's Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (1588-92), William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610-1), and John Milton's A Maske Performed at Ludlow Castle (1634). These early English plays stage their magic as socially and personally beneficial, not just illusory, flawed, or demonic. Whether staging magic as a critique or apology for its own medium, however, the plays suggest that theater draws upon magic to depict itself as efficacious. This project thus reads magic as both a metaphoric, literary convention and its own entity with accompanying political and cultural effects. Examining magic and its representation as part of a continuum--as contemporary audiences would have done--offers a clearer picture of what magic is doing in the plays and how early observers might have apprehended its effects. This dissertation offers a textually based cultural context for the magic found within its central plays, bringing extraliterary magical texts into conversation with literary, dramatic texts. Because the borders between natural philosophy, religion, and magic were not clearly defined in early modern England, this project draws as well upon scholarship and primary materials in the history of science and religion. The motivation of this project is to reanimate early English theater with a sense of wonder and magic that it historically offered and that it continues to bring to readers and audiences to this day.Item Representations of Familiar Wildlife in Germany and England, 1520-1630(2013) Behringer, Ashley Scheffel; Soergel, Philip M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This work uses Protestant propaganda, hunting tracts and forest laws, and natural histories to explore the depiction of deer, foxes, and hares in Germany and England, 1520-1630. Religious, venatorial, and natural historical discourses overlap with one another and the three differ more in the way in which they use real animals than in how they depict animals on the page. Continuing the theme of mixing the real and the symbolic, in portrayals of the characters of animals we see a mixture of real traits and anthropomorphic traits. Germany and England do not differ greatly in depiction of animals though they differ in several respects in the ways they used real animals. Deer, foxes, and hares are the example species because they were familiar, hunted, culturally significant animals and thus they can be compared to one another.Item Music of the New Lusitania: The Impact of Humanist Thought on Polyphony in Sixteenth-Century Portugal(2006-05-07) Vicente, Victor Amaro; Wexler, Richard; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Cosmopolitan, politically influential, and wealthy, Portugal experienced its "Golden Age" in the sixteenth century. Though science and the arts reached their apogee during this era, polyphonic music in Portugal does not seem to have flourished to any great extent before the seventeenth century. The few extant examples of secular court polyphony, in particular, demonstrate a predominantly homorhythmic style possibly cultivated by amateur composers. This aesthetic favoring simpler musical textures likely developed from the humanist notion that music must serve the text. Italian humanism, in fact, had a profound impact on Renaissance Portugal, which claimed its ancient Roman name, Lusitania. In literature and art the influence is quite apparent, but the case for music requires a more detailed study that is sensitive to broader social factors. This study argues that the composition and performance of Renaissance Portuguese court music is best understood within the context of the Counter-Reformation and Christian humanism.Item The Palio in Italian Renaissance Art, Thought, and Culture(2005-04-28) Tobey, Elizabeth MacKenzie; Colantuono, Anthony; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PALIO IN ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ART, THOUGHT,AND CULTURE Elizabeth MacKenzie Tobey, Doctor of Philosophy, 2005 Dissertation directed by: Dr. Anthony Colantuono, Associate Professor of Art History. University of Maryland. The palio race commemorates the history of Italian cities as it has done so since the late Middle Ages. Despite its cultural significance, and the popularity of ritual topics in Renaissance scholarship, there exists no comparable art historical study of the palio. In the thirteenth century, the proliferation of feast days in Italian cities coincided with growth in population and commerce. The palio race was the culminating, profane event in a series of sacred offerings and processions, in which representatives of the city's religious and political groups participated. The palio may have descended from the chariot races held in Roman Italy for pagan festivals. The city government organized and paid for the palio. In Siena, the participation of the contrade (neighborhood groups) in the palio helped to preserve the tradition in the face of Florentine rule. Italian cities, including Florence, were highly-regarded for their silk fabrics. Cities commissioned the largest and most opulent palio banners for the patronal feasts. Making the banner was a collaborative effort, involving the craftsmanship of banner-makers, furriers, painters, and even nuns. During religious processions, the banner was paraded through the city on a carro trionfale (triumphal chariot or cart), reminiscent of the vexillum, a cloth military standard used in triumphs of Roman antiquity. The palio banner challenges preconceptions of how Renaissance society valued art objects. The cost of making the banner equaled or exceeded payments for panel paintings or frescoes by well-known artists. Following the feast day, it was worth only the value of its materials, which were recycled or sold. Noble and ruling families competed against each other through their prize horses. These families imported the animals from North Africa and Ottoman Turkey, and gave them as diplomatic gifts. The trade in horses, like the textile trade, was part of an international commerce that brought countries and cultures together. Equestrian culture flowered during the Renaissance, in which horses began to be seen as individuals possessing admirable, even human, qualities. Palio horses achieved a level of fame parallel of the racing champions of the modern era, and were portrayed in paintings, prose, and verse.Item "Your garbe makes me I knowe you not": The Cavendish Family and the Literary Transformation of Marriage Practices(2004-08-09) Wells, Christina M.; Donawerth, Jane L.; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In this dissertation, I examine Jane Cavendish, Elizabeth Brackley, and their father, William Cavendish, as a literary coterie, asserting that comparisons between the generations are necessary to a full understanding of their literature and its historical context. Each family member authored texts that examine the role of women in marriage, and each of their analyses places the English Civil War in the forefront. This conjunction between marriage and war preoccupies the Cavendish family with conflations of domestic and state business. I argue that each member of the Cavendish family portrays a war where noblewomen's marital choices influenced who would--and who would not--join the power structure, hoping to regain authority for the monarchy and its followers. Father and daughters address marriage and the nobility in different ways, but in each case, marriage is a device to explain larger social conditions and choices by women. The family was at the center of dialogue concerning women's marital and martial roles in the English Civil War. With my introduction, I provide an overview of the Cavendish family's historical circumstances in the war, examining the relationship between Royalism and the aristocratic household. In Chapter 2, I use the <I>Book of Common Prayer</I> and sources on monastic community to situate Jane Cavendish's poetic threat to become a nun to avoid marriage, and I place in context the sisters' <I>Concealed Fancies</I>, a household drama in which women employ a variety of techniques--including the threat to be a nun--to postpone marital decisions. Chapters 3 and 4 each concern the family's use of the pastoral to dramatize Civil War nobility. Cavendish and Brackley's <I>A Pastorall</I> rewrites pastoral tradition as a feminist endeavor, one that gives shepherdesses a vocal demonstration against marriage during war. William Cavendish's "Parte of a Pastorall" and its supporting texts attempt to recreate history, uplifting the defeated Royalist, while claiming marriage as a way to restore Royalist plentitude. With each chapter, I maintain that the Cavendish family sought to define home, looking at marriage with a new sense of purpose because of the war surrounding them.