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 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 STICK FLY: A DISSECTION OF PROCESS AND EXPLORATION OF ADVOCACY(2022) Taylor, Zavier Augustus Lee; Mezzocchi, Jared M; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The following thesis is a series of observations and explorations documenting my experiences as Media and Projections Designer of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center at The University of Maryland College Park’s production of Stick Fly by Lydia R. Diamond. The production opened on April 15th, 2022 as a live performance in the Kogod Theatre. Stick Fly was performed in a black box theater space with direction by Kenyatta Rogers, Scenic Design by Abigail Bueti, Associate Scenic Design by Mollie Singer, co-sound design by Neil McFadden and Gordon Nimmo-Smith, lighting design by Christian Henrriquez, and costume design by Ashlynne Ludwig.Item BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD(2023) Ward, Cyrah Louise; Davis, Crystal U; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD is a 30-minute multimodal performative meditation birthed at the crossroads of spirituality and sensuality. Migrating the audience through jazz worlds saturated with ancestral choreographies, storytelling, and spoken words, BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD acts as a divine medium converging the past and the present. Carefully informed by embodied practices within the Hoodoo spiritual system, BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD submerges viewers into a Black cultural landscape where the sacred and secular collide. BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD directed by Cyrah L. Ward premiered as an installation on Monday, November 14, 2022, and an embodied performance on Thursday, November 17, 2022. The installation designed by Cyrah L. Ward in collaboration with scenic designer Sarah Beth Hall features a series of found sacred objects, original digital art collages, and poetry. The embodied performance of BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD features choreography by Cyrah L. Ward in collaboration with Ronya-Lee Anderson, scenic design by Sarah Beth Hall, audio engineering by Cyrah L. Ward, sound design by Veronica J. Lancaster, lighting design by Luis Garcia, costume design by Ashlynne Ludwig, projection design by Deja Collins, and stage managing by Safiya Muthaliff. This document serves as a written performance that creatively travels readers through the energetic, spiritual, compositional, and choreographic development of BLACK IS HOLY: A WORD.Item HYPERVISIBLE RENDERINGS: BLACK FEMINIST PERFORMANCE IN THE TWENTIETH AND TWENTY FIRST CENTURIES(2021) Ridley, Leticia; Carpenter, Faedra C; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Hypervisible Renderings: Black Feminist Performance in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries examines contemporary Black women’s performance cultures, or the ways that Black women artists, athletes, and musicians (who all occupy the position of celebrity) make culture that articulates their definitions of self and constructs alternative frameworks for Black women to occupy. In service of this, I argue that Black women’s popular entertainment is energized towards the goal of liberating Black women from the limited discursive meanings that animate our lives. The chapters of my dissertation analyze the work of three Black women celebrities from the United States: playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, athlete Serena Jameka Williams, and musician Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter. Though my dissertation addresses broad inquires around Black women’s performance, Black feminism, performance studies, and popular culture, I specifically address the following questions: (1) What spaces of world-making are opened and generated by Black women celebrities? (2) How does performance theory and Black feminist theory reconfigure our understanding of hypervisibility? (3) How do public acts of Black women’s performance become an integral intervention and reconstruction of Black womanhood? In answering these questions, I foreground the belief that Black women celebrities and their subsequent cultural productions are central to understanding the cultural fabric of the United States; this belief insists on the critical examination of their processes. I assert that the strategies they employ in their performances are deeply invested in interrogating, challenging, and disrupting the racism and sexism that underpins American popular culture. This project aims to unsettle easy disavowals of Black celebrities and Black women’s contemporary performance cultures by underscoring their potential to instigate social and political disruption in order to generate progress. In doing so, and in the spirit of Angela Davis’ Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, my dissertation will underscore how Black women celebrities cannot be “written off” as mere entertainers and, instead, highlighting how their work must be recognized as offering substantial contributions to social discourses regarding race, gender, and sexuality in America.Item Theorizing the Brave: Black Girlhood, Affect, and Performance in Kirsten Childs's The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin(2019) Ealey, Jordan Alexandria; Chatard Carpenter, Faedra; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Theorizing the Brave” is a critical study of Kirsten Childs’s musical, The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin (2000). Through a textual analysis of the musical’s book and lyrics as well as a thorough consideration of the musical’s historical context and implications, this thesis investigates the overarching question: How does Bubbly Black Girl interrogate the precarious political position of Black girls and women in the theatre? Specifically, how does Childs’s musical challenge and reframe notions of Blackness, girlhood, womanhood, and sexuality? By critically engaging The Bubbly Black Girl Sheds Her Chameleon Skin, this thesis project employs theoretical frameworks of Black feminist theory, critical race theory, and affect theory to examine how Childs interrogates and reformulates the discourse around Black girls and women in the American theatre, thereby also challenging the constrictive scripting of Black girlhood and womanhood in everyday life.Item TIDES(2019) Law, Mariama Kancou; Davis, Crystal; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This document explores the research and inspirations behind TIDES, a dance performance that employs a cyclical structure to incorporate personal experiences of Ama Law, the choreographer and director, as well as the cultural ancestry of its cast of thirteen women of African descent. Law shares her approach to developing TIDES that includes an anthropological perspective to investigate the personal histories of her cast and concepts of historical revisionism to bring awareness to black women on stage. This paper utilizes Knowledge (an important element of hip hop) as a methodology that brings healing to communities. Law also highlights stories of women in urban dance and histories of the African, modern and urban movement styles used in TIDES (Vogue, Chicago house, Dunham technique, movement from West African countries and more).Item FULL CIRCLE: BRIDGING THE GAP(2017) Law, Christopher; Bradley, Karen; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As an MFA candidate at the University of Maryland College Park's School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies, I used Hip-Hop and Modern dance to address cycles that have been recurring throughout American history since Congress’ abolishment of slavery in 1865. However, the events depicted were told from the perspective of Americans between the ages of 19 and 33. Each story served as a moment for the audience to assess themselves, this country, and the recent events that have shaped our experiences. The concert was performed in the round to pay homage to Hip-Hop's practice of the "Cypher" (performance exchange within a circular gathering of people). Within the cypher, my goal was to encourage dialogue concerning issues of race, gender, community, and police brutality. My thesis concert was entitled "Full Circle: Bridging the Gap,” and was presented on December 9th, 10th, and 11th of 2016.Item Octavia's Brood: Riding the Ox Home(2016) Bowden Abadoo, Meghan Kamiche; Phillips, Miriam; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Octavia’s Brood: Riding the Ox Home was an evening-length dance concert performed October 15 and 16, 2015, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center in partial fulfillment of the Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Maryland’s School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies. Inspired by the prophetic envisioning of Harriet Tubman and Octavia Butler, it explores race, otherness, ownership and story-telling from the perspective of Black women’s dancing bodies and histories. Borrowing its title from Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, it utilizes visionary story-telling, where science fiction provides a foundation for imagining socially just worlds inhabited by richly diverse protagonists. This paper is a written account of the research by which I composed this immersive dance event, leaping back and forth through time, landing between antebellum Maryland of the mid-1800s and an unknown place at an unknown date of a foreseen future.Item Let it Flo! Theatrical Process and Production(2013) Clay, Caroline Stefanie; Smiley, Leigh W; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Let It Flo! is a theatricalized imagining based on the real life of the late attorney, and feminist Florynce "Flo" Kennedy. It was borne out of my deep artistic need to understand the intersections between activism and identity. Kennedy's audacity, flamboyance, sharp tongue, and intellect were her currency in the world of 1970's racial and gender politics. In later years, Flo faces increasing anonymity among the very generation of women who benefitted most from her willingness to fight for their rights. This scholarly query is measured through the lens of Kennedy's life choice to walk the road less travelled as a free woman. Hers was a trajectory marked by verbal radicalism, personal triumph, contradiction, and ascension. As Flo faces her final transition, she fights to spur into action the current generation into a life of advocacy, equality, and authenticity.