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 BY THE WAY, MEET VERA STARK: A LIGHTING DESIGN(2023) Reynolds, Heather; Chandrashaker, Amith; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis provides documentation and reflection on the lighting design for the University of Maryland - College Park School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies production of By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by Lynn Nottage. This thesis contains a written explanation of the design process and approach; visual research used to help communicate design intent to the production team; drafting plates used to convey the placement and organization of the lighting equipment; magic sheets, discussion of the organizational and communication tools for the lighting design team; a discussion of the effects of COVID-19 on the production and design process; and documentation of the creation of the “Belle of New Orleans” film required by the script. Included production photographs document the completed design. This production held two preview performances on October 7th and 9th and opened on October 13th, 2022.Item After Bend It Like Beckham: Soccer in 21st-Century Theatre and Performance(2023) Strange, Jared; Harding, James; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)After Bend It Like Beckham: Soccer in 21st-Century Theatre and Performance examines how the performativity of the world’s most popular sport is “played” by various actors for the purposes of social, cultural, and political transformation. In addition to being a type of performance, sports can be considered performative in that they can enact a consequential transformation, such that a win on the field becomes a win in life. Assumptions surrounding the transformative capacities of soccer, unabashedly described by fans and stakeholders as “The Beautiful Game,” are especially potent, particularly when invested with material powers that forms the sports-industrial complex. By examining case studies ranging from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play The Wolves to exhibition matches staged by authoritarian leaders, this dissertation demonstrates how soccer’s performativity can be reconfigured advantageously in conditions extracted from actual gameplay. Dramas that spotlight sportswomen using soccer to forge greater individual and collective selves show how athletes can play against the barriers that inhibit their access to the sport, and how nuanced representations of the plight of sportswomen can play against uncritical deployments of representation that only validate success. National and sporting governments, on the other hand, can leverage the sport to reify nationalistic myths and induce participants to reconfigure social memory through acts of play that elide historical accuracy and obscure the material powers invested in the game. This dissertation arrives at an ideal time to engage debates over the “true” nature of performativity, accounting for the efficacy of gestures amidst accusations of “performative activism” and redirecting attention to the conditions that make transformation possible but are more likely to sanction superficial changes that do not threaten the status quo. Soccer’s performative capacity can thus be understood as both a source of empowerment for players inhibited by racial, gendered, and nationalistic exclusion and a concept that is easily manipulated by powerbrokers whose embeddedness within the sports-industrial complex is protected by the very systems that perpetuate extraction and exclusion.Item CIVIC DRAMATURGY: CULTURAL SPACE, ARTISTIC LABOR, AND PERFORMANCES OF URBAN PLANNING IN 21ST CENTURY CHICAGO(2022) Thomas, LaRonika; Harding, James; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation develops a theory of “civic dramaturgy.” Civic dramaturgy is a process of performing identity through changes to and impacts on the built environment, as well as a method of analyzing and contextualizing those performances to better understand the multiple modes of identity expression that make up a specific place, in the case of this dissertation, that place is the city of Chicago. Civic dramaturgy joins theories of “performance and the city” together with theatre history and urban studies to examine cultural space, cultural policy, performances of urban planning, and the ways in which artistic labor is used by individuals, corporations, and governments in non-representational performances of civic and urban identity in the United States. This study first establishes a working definition of civic dramaturgy, tracing the development of the ideas of the “civic” and “dramaturgy” through western theatre history, as well as examining other theories significant to urban planning, critical space theory, spatial representations of gender and race, and performance of cities. Dramaturgy involved four main areas of practice: analysis of plot structure, relationship between artist and audience, locality and spatial awareness, and contextualization. Each of chapters one through four examine an aspect of Chicago through one of these practices to build toward this definition of civic dramaturgy. I identified the city of Chicago as the site of study for this work because of its history of planning the built environment and its robust theatre history, including the way in which its theatre has been intertwined with social and spatial movements through the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries. In addition to an examination of the development of the city and its theatre, civic dramaturgy requires an analysis of the ways in which artistic labor co-creates civic identity, the social space of the city, and the built environment. In particular, the work of Theaster Gates, an artist and planner working on the south side of Chicago, provides a poignant example of the ways cultural planning, performance, and labor work to craft a civic identity; and the structure of these interwoven performances are examples of civic dramaturgy. Finally, the performance of the digital space of the city is also an important component of civic dramaturgy and the fourth chapter breaks down the ways in which actor and audience relationships manifest through sensory-inscribed bodies in performance and planning of the built environment. This study builds upon existing scholarship that posits dramaturgy as a way to understand performance, architecture, policy-making, and politics, extending the use of the structural and spatial concepts of dramaturgy beyond the rehearsal room, the stage, and the site-specific performance, in order to craft a more comprehensive means by which to understand performance and the city, and providing an example of a kind of dramaturgically-based analysis that may also be used when looking at all kinds of urban spaces and phenomena, and which may be theorized as “civic dramaturgy.”Item HERE I AM: AN EXPLORATION OF VIRTUAL LIVE PERFORMANCE(2021) Bennett, Jeremy Donnell; Mezzocchi, Jared; 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 both an artistic collaborator and contributor of the Davis Performing Arts Center at Georgetown University’s production of Here I Am. The production opened April 15th, 2021 as a virtual live performance streamed through YouTube. Here I Am was an original performance by Mélisande (Meli) Short-Colomb with direction by Derek Goldman and Nikkole Salter, music composition and vocal performance by Somi Kakoma, multimedia design by Jared Mezzocchi, sound design by Andre Pluess and lighting design by Alberto Segarra.Item Moving from the Archive: Historiography and "Authenticity" in Commedia dell'Arte Performance(2018) Wilson, Matthew R.; Hildy, Franklin J.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the multiple definitions of “Commedia dell’Arte” in historiography and contemporary performance, analyzing potentials and problematics behind attempts to understand “historical” Commedia dell’Arte and to (re)construct contemporary Commedia using what Franklin J. Hildy calls an “applied theater history” approach. Employing archival historiography, literary analysis, art historical techniques, practical dramaturgy, Practice-as-Research, and qualitative research, I describe different realities of Commedia dell’Arte performance from history and contemporary practice, including ways in which “mistakes” or “appropriations” in the form have become included within its present identities. Chapter One describes the status of the field, problems, and approaches to identifying what Commedia dell’Arte “is” today based upon autoethnography and interview material from contemporary practitioners, whose competing approaches inform the ongoing conversation. Chapter Two traces the history of the form known as “Commedia dell’Arte” from its origins to contemporary pedagogy with special attention given to appropriations, evolutions, distortions, and efforts at reproduction. In Chapter Three, I narrow the focus to a specific case-study—a recent production of the classic scenario Il Cavadente (The Tooth-Puller) from the Commedia dell’Arte repertoire—with special attention to the problematics of translating, interpreting, and reconstructing historical sources as dramatic literary content. Chapter Four describes an art-historical approach to assessing, analyzing, and utilizing iconography from Commedia dell’Arte’s history, while Chapter Five describes a specific attempt to design the visual world for a contemporary production of The Tooth-Puller with reference to competing goals of faithfulness to the tradition and availability for artistic innovation. Chapter Six employs Practice-as-Research (and what I advocate as Research-as-Practice) to embody reimagined characters based on the Commedia archive. Chapter Seven utilizes participant interviews and audience surveys to reflect upon Ole Miss Theatre & Film’s production of The Tooth-Puller, the final (though always fluid) script of which is included as Appendix A. This concluding chapter also reflects, through the voices of contemporary teachers and practitioners, on the nature of Commedia dell’Arte and its place in current actor training and theatrical innovation. While the field of Commedia practitioners today is divided between those who prescribe an “authentic” system for “historical” Commedia and those who freely declare that “Commedia doesn’t exist” in any knowable form, this dissertation models a middle way of interacting faithfully and rigorously with extant data from the past in order to freely create a continuation of the Commedia tradition for the future.Item SO AS TO COMPASS THE INTEREST: ARTISAN DRAMATURGY, COPYRIGHT REFORM, AND THE THEATRICAL INSURGENCY OF 1856(2014) Tobiason, Aaron M.; Nathans, Heather S; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1856, a change in American copyright law finally gave playwrights control over performances of their work. That change was the culmination of decades of concerted and sustained efforts by a small number of playwrights and their political allies, men who embraced a theatrical aesthetic at odds with antebellum American production practices. I argue that previous scholarship has underestimated the importance of the 1856 law to the development of American theatre. Using a series of case studies, I propose that antebellum theatrical production was guided by a system of artisan dramaturgy. Key to this formulation is the concept of bespoke playwrighting: those who composed antebellum performance texts were more wrights than writers, handicraftsmen and women whose medium was the manuscript rather than the printed text. They drew freely from an extensive public domain created and protected by American copyright law. Published and unpublished plays, novels, songs, poems, current events - all were raw materials for the antebellum dramatist, to be combined, recontextualized, and reimagined. The system of artisan dramaturgy encouraged plays tailored to particular actors, companies, and audiences. These practices, among others, vexed playwrights who resented subjecting their plays to the messy, collaborative undertaking of antebellum American playmaking. I explore how their vision for the theatre drew on a particular understanding of natural rights, one that led them to see copyright as the most effective way to alter the economic conditions of playwriting. I document the largely unexplored legislative history of their efforts, which ultimately interposed statutory law into an art form that had been regulated almost entirely by the common law. The1856 legislation accelerated a process that would ultimately alter the balance of power among the various theatrical collaborators in favor of the playwright, driving greater and greater synergy between dramatic text and performance and ultimately allowing playwrights to supplant the primacy of the actor or manager in shaping performances. By so doing, it also significantly reduced the vibrancy, flexibility, and innovation that had characterized the antebellum American theatre.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 "To the Advantage of the City": Playgoing, Patriotism, and the First Washington Theatres, 1800-1836(2012) Saunders, AnnMarie Thomas; Nathans, Heather S; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1803, a group of budding civic leaders in the fledgling capital city of Washington D.C. laid the cornerstone for what they hoped would be the first truly "national" theatre of the United States. Yet their grandiose dreams for a playhouse encountered as many obstacles as the rest of the city in the first decades of its development. My project, "'To the Advantage of the City': Playgoing, Patriotism, and the first Washington Theatres, 1800- 1836," represents the first full-length scholarly study of Washington D.C. theatre during the early national period. In my work, I examine the complex networks of economic and political associations that facilitated the development the district's theatre culture. I map the numerous experiments, the sporadic successes, and the traumatic failures that nearly drove theatre from the nation's capital. I explore the ways in which the presumption that theatre could and would contribute to narratives of American nationalism may have contributed to the failures of the early Washington theatre efforts as well as the determination with which theatre proponents in the District worked to rise above these failures and incorporate theatre into the culture of the capital, and thus the nation.Item A Tradeshow Design for Nintendo of America(2007-08-30) Zoll, Laurence; Conway, Daniel; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Designing trade show exhibits for large corporations is a viable career path for students of theatrical design. There are distinct similarities and differences between design for theatre and industry, and by creating a theoretical design for the Nintendo Corporation I compare and contrast the differences between the two. Designing for a tradeshow incorporates some factors that theatrical designers must consider differently than they would for a normal stage production, and once a designer can understand these as well as the fact that he is designing not necessarily art for art's sake, but art for a bottom line they can fully embrace the corporate model. The act of design is inherently artistic, and I have found through my design for Nintendo, that art can still have beauty, integrity and purpose while serving the practical needs of a profit driven company.Item THE ARTIFICE OF ETERNITY: A STUDY OF LITURGICAL AND THEATRICAL PRACTICES IN BYZANTIUM(2006-07-23) White, Andrew Walker; Hildy, Franklin J.; Majeska, George P.; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study attempts to fill a substantial gap in our knowledge of theatre history by focusing on the Orthodox ritual aesthetic and its relationship with traditional theatrical practice in the Eastern Roman Empire - also known as Byzantium. Through a review of spatial practices, performance aesthetics and musical practice, and culminating in a case study of the Medieval Office of the Three Children in the Fiery Furnace, this dissertation attempts to demonstrate how the Orthodox Church responded to the theatre, and determine whether the theatre influenced the development of its ritual aesthetic. Because of the well-documented rapprochement between church and theatre in the west, this study also tries to determine whether there was a similar reconciliation in the Orthodox east. From the Early Byzantine period onward, conduct of the Orthodox Liturgy was rooted in a ritual aesthetic that avoided direct imitation or representation. This Orthodox ritual aesthetic influenced every aspect of the Liturgy, from iconography to chant to liturgical dance, and involved a rejection of practices that, in the Church's view, would draw too much attention to the material or artistic aspects of ritual. Theatrical modes of representation were consistently avoided and condemned as anathema. Even in the Middle Ages, when Catholics began to imitate Jesus at the altar and perform representations of biblical episodes using actors, realistic settings and special effects, Orthodox hierarchs continued to reject theatrical modes of performance. One possible exception to this rule is a Late Byzantine rite identified by western scholars as a "liturgical drama" - the Office of the Three Children. But a detailed reconstruction of its performance elements reveals that it was quite different in its aesthetics from Medieval Catholic practice. Some of the Office's instructions, however, lend themselves to a theatrical interpretation; and the instability of the Office's manuscript tradition, as seen in five extant versions, reveals strong disagreements about whether and how to include many of its key visual and musical elements.