Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
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.
Browse
4 results
Search Results
Item Decorative Specter(2021) McWilliams, Noah Leonard; Keener, Cy; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This exhibition reflects a tragic and anticlimactic future. The ultimate outcome of human exploration of the universe will no doubt shed light on the dismal nature of our interpersonal relationships and grand aspirations.Decorative Specter is an exhibition of sculpture and video that depicts a distant future inhabited by decorative artifacts of long extinct human civilizations. The works in this exhibition are speculative portraits of alien, but eerily familiar puppets. They represent moments within an implied overarching narrative, frozen for study and contemplation. My use of commonly overlooked aesthetics is intended to remind us that other intelligent life will likely spring from an unexpected place and with unexpected results. In the following text I will explain the formal qualities and concepts behind the work.Item DWELLING: A PERSPECTIVE OF THE IN-BETWEEN(2019) Carlson, Stacey; Keefe, Maura; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Today’s contemporary circus is marked by a merging of embodied practices, including dance, puppetry and clowning. Apart from etymological play on meaning and the corporeal; the mixing, meddling, and swirling of genres not only offers the artist a new way to express sensory experiences, but also engages the artist and the art into a new interdependent relationship with an interactive audience. This research explores how these traditional and contemporary art forms are being interpreted, understood and contextualized. Through a tacit use of phenomenology, the study contributes to a better understanding of the location of embodied practice in dance research and it establishes the interconnectedness between tradition and modernity; past, present, and future; and the exploration of the in-between. Dwelling was an interdisciplinary work performed October 12 and 14, 2018 in the Kogod Theater at the Clarice Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of the Master in Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland, College Park’s School of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies.Item "Coffee & Biscuit": A Variation on Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House"(2013) Bayer, Teresa Ann; Felbain, Leslie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Artistic adaptation is most often defined as the process of transporting or transforming a particular work of theatre to a different location, time period, or situation. This choice allows a play to be seen and understood in a new light, illuminating particular themes or ideas inherent to the script or story. Coffee & Biscuit is a 1950's Technicolor variation on Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House in which we see Nora Helmer's perfect world of Hoovers and Jell-O molds topple around her. This darkly whimsical romp, featuring both puppets and live actors, is an adaptation that examines how a contemporary theatre audience can be provoked to question the gender roles constructed by society and the media.Item The Phenomenology of Racialism: Blackface Puppetry in American Theatre, 1872-1939(2005-04-20) Fisler, Benjamin Daniel; Hildy, Franklin J; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1872, a company headed by English theatrical entrepreneur William John Bullock introduced the first full marionette minstrel show to the American stage. Throughout the following sixty-seven years, puppeteers presented a variety of productions featuring ostensibly African or African American characters, including: traditional blackface minstrel shows, adaptations of Helen Bannerman's Little Black Sambo, numerous "Punch and Judy" plays, and productions of such ostensibly "authentic" portraits of black persons as Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones and Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus" stories. This investigation employs phenomenology to explore the "essence" of specific blackface puppets, maintaining that none of the objects or plays discussed here are necessarily examples of authentic black representation. Rather, this investigation adopts the shifting perspective of phenomenology to show that what some past puppeteers thought were authentic African or African American characters, were, with but a single exception, consistently racialized exaggerations derived from the heritage of minstrelsy. Phenomenology, in its emphasis on the essence of "things," permits the scholar to investigate both the physical existence of empirically verifiable objects, such as the puppets that are still in existence long after the deaths of their creators, and the meanings their observers embed them with, such as the character the puppets were imagined to be during their manipulators' careers. Phenomenology helps explain the interaction between the puppet's corporeal form and its perceived dramatic meaning, which is often a result of apportioned, or as some critics call it, atomized components, including: object, manipulation, and voice. Thus, while phenomenology is useful in explaining how an early twentieth-century puppeteer might see Topsy as an authentic representation of a young African American woman, even if an early twenty-first century scholar would see it as a minstrel stereotype, it is equally useful in explaining how different components of a single puppet performance could contribute to a contradictory essence for a single blackface character. This investigation details the careers of a number of puppeteers and puppet companies, using the phenomenological method to explain the diverse essences of their work. Included are companies spanning a history from the Royal Marionettes to the Federal Theatre Project.