Theatre, Dance & Performance Studies
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://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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Item To Inherit the Wind: Margo Jones as Director(1991) Housley, Helen Marie; Gillespie, Patti P.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Margo Jones was an important force in the American theatre. Noted as theatrical producer, nurturer of new playwrights, initiator of professional arena staging, and founder of the regional theatre movement, Jones directed over a hundred plays in Houston, Dallas, and on Broadway. Yet no study has examined her directing methods and their implications. Margo Jones' directorial relationship to the script, actors, designers, stage, and critics was examined and evaluated using correspondence, promptbooks, interviews, reviews, and published works. Directing provided Margo Jones with the link to accomplish two essential goals she set for herself: to decentralize the American theatre and to promote new plays and playwrights. The playwright was central in Margo Jones’ theatre. She directed only "originals'' and "classics," espousing the playwright 's cause by directing over fifty new scripts during her eight-year tenure in Dallas. For Jones, the actor was the primary communicator of the playwright's text and the focus of the staged play. Jones preferred simple scenic design, using light and sound to stimulate the audience's imagination and relying on the actors and text to do the rest. For Jones, the production was a collaboration between director and actors, exploring characters creatively and developing blocking organically from the words and ideas the playwright provided. Margo Jones' reputation as director was forged with her innovative development of a language and method for directing in-the-round. Her work on Broadway's proscenium stages, however, was beset by difficulties with playwrights, actors, and critics. Jones decried the commercial theatre and its reliance on critics and long runs for success. The Broadway model was anathema to this director who enjoyed the theatrical process so much so that she directed a play every two weeks during her seasons in Dallas. Margo's work as director offers two fertile areas for further research: First, her directorial methods appear similar to recently identified female-specific strategies of communication and the directing techniques of contemporary female directors. Secondly, her innovative methods pointed directions to be taken during the theatrical renaissance of the 1960s and 1970s.Item Women in American Theatre, 1850-1870: A Study in Professional Equity(1986) Cooley, Edna Hammer; Meersman, Roger; Communications Arts & Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)This study supports the contention that women in the American theatre from 1850 to 1870 experienced a unique degree of professional equity with men in theatre. The time-frame has been selected for two reasons: (1) actresses active after 1870 have been the subject of several dissertations and scholarly studies, while relatively little research has been completed on women active on the American stage prior to 1870, and (2) prior to 1850 there was limited theatre activity in this country and very few professional actresses. A general description of mid-nineteenth-century theatre and its social context is provided, including a summary of major developments in theatre in New York and other cities from 1850 to 1870, discussions of the star system, the combination company, and the mid-century audience. Important social influences on the theatre, and on women working in the theatre, include the emergence of the Women's Rights movement in 1848, the ''Gold Rush" and consequent westward expansion, and increased immigration. A discussion of the nineteenth-century view of women's role in society and the prescriptive ideal of "belle femme" wife and mother demonstrates that the American actress, successfully employed, constituted a contradiction of society's ideal. Two indicators of professional equity are discussed: career opportunities and salaries. A description of the careers of four actresses, Mrs. W. G. Jones, Maggie Mitchell, Kate Reignolds, and Mrs. J. R. Vincent, illustrates four differentiated career patterns open to women in mid-century theatre. The management careers of Mrs. John Drew, Laura Keene, and Mrs. John Wood are described to exemplify opportunities open to women as theatre managers. Additional information on twenty-two other actresses active on the American stage from 1850 to 1870 is also presented. Research on wages paid to men and women in mid-century theatre demonstrates the degree to which women's salaries were comparable to men's salaries. The study concludes that from 1850 to 1870, the American theatre offered women opportunities for stable employment, long and varied careers, success as theatre managers, and a degree of economic equity with male counterparts which exceeded economic equity possible in other occupations.Item Spirals from the Matrix: The Feminist Plays of Martha Boesing, An Analysis(1987) Greeley, Lynne; Gillespie, Patti P.; Communication Arts and Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)Martha Boesing is a feminist playwright who in association with the feminist theatre, At the Foot of the Mountain, has written and produced feminist plays since 1974. Boesing has contributed to the development of feminist dramatic theory and criticism in the United States. In this dissertation, Boesing’s twenty-two published and produced plays are analyzed. The analyses are placed in the context of the experimental theatre movement of the 1960s and the women's movement of the 1970s in the United States and in Minneapolis, where At the Foot of the Mountain is located. The scripts are analyzed for recurrent patterns in the use of the stage space, the development of the characters, the organization of the dramatic structure and form, and the manipulation of the language and music. Throughout the analyses, particular attention is given to the ways in which Boesing's feminist thinking informs her work so that feminist theatre may be distinguished from other forms of experimental theatre. In addition to the analyses of the written texts, a video of a performance and the film of a play are analyzed. Finally, feminist dramatic theory as represented by Boesing is compared to relevant feminist theories of literature and film. Thus, this dissertation is a case study of a radical feminist playwright in the United States, who consciously rejected the commercial theatre to work regionally, and who, in a feminist theatre, produced a significant body of work as a feminist in a feminist context. Boesing's strategies of writing can therefore be seen as representative of a successful feminist playwright.