<p> This dissertation explores operatic adaptations of Orlando <i>JR furioso </i> in the eighteenth century, particularly as they relate to the Arcadian Academy. Whereas the seventeenth century witnessed only a handful of <i> Furioso</i>-themed operas, the eighteenth century was a veritable geyser of operatic Orlando; dozens of libretti were produced on the subject, leading to an eighteenth-century craze for the crazed, staged Orlando. The most celebrated and most diffused operatic adaptations of the <i>Furioso</i> were produced by members of the highly influential Arcadian Academy, an institution that aimed to establish a literary (and therefore social, cultural, and political) reign of good taste and reason throughout the European continent. This dissertation probes why and how Arcadians, self-proclaimed harbingers of eighteenth-century reason, were so invested in the operatic depiction of a Renaissance madman. I am interested not only in the intertextual threads of operatic Orlando that is, how librettists and composers translated sixteenth-century sensibilities to the eighteenth-century stage&mdash;but also how these intertextual threads can be read for their broad cultural resonances. Operatic Orlando, in his many permutations, is emblematic of the complexities and contradictions espoused by the Arcadian Academy, and, as such, is crucial to the shaping of an eighteenth-century ethos.</p><p> This dissertation consists of five chapters. The first chapter explores the different ways in which Arcadians understood madness, in its myriad manifestations. Rather than focusing specifically on opera, I cast a wide net in my discussion in order to holistically approach Arcadian theories and practices: through an examination of early Arcadian writings I identify threads and currents that likely formed the text/texture for the operatic Orlando craze. Chapter 2 focuses more specifically on Arcadian opera, if such a concept truly existed: drawing from the works of scholars of music history such as those of Freeman, Strohm, and Smith, I explore the conventions of eighteenth-century opera and contextualize them within the frame of the Arcadian Academy and its reform culture. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 form the analytical body of the dissertation, as they each probe the conditions and textual questions of specific adaptations of the <i>Furioso</i>. I consider the libretti discussed in each of these chapters to be `ur-adaptations,' in that they were each performed&mdash;and often modified&mdash;numerous times in diverse locales, serving as textual bases for many of the eighteenth-century <i>Furioso</i> adaptations. In these chapters I perform both historical analyses and close readings of texts, as well as musical analyses and examinations of related textual objects. Thus in Chapter 3 I read Grazio Braccioli's libretto <i>Orlando furioso </i> (1713) as well as his related libretto <i>Orlando finto pazzo </i> (1714), and explore the musical settings of composer Antonio Vivaldi as they were performed at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice; in Chapter 4 I turn to Rome, with Carlo Sigismondo Capece's libretto <i>Orlando ovvero la gelosa pazzia</i> (1711), and follow the work to its London iteration <i> Orlando</i> (1733), which was set to music by George Frideric Handel; finally, in Chapter 5 I analyze Pietro Metastasio's serenata <i>L'Angelica </i> (1720) within the context of the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, and explore its resonances throughout Europe.</p><p>

The critical discussion of metatheatre has historically connected a series of reflexive dramatic strategies—like soliloquy, chorus, dumb show, the-play-within-the-play, prologue, and epilogue—and assumed that because these tropes all involve the play's apparent awareness of its own theatrical nature they all have similar dramaturgical functions. This dissertation, by contrast, shows that the efficacy derived from metatheatrical moments that overtly reference theatrical production is better understood in the context of restaged non-theatrical cultural performances. Restaged moments of both theatrical and non-theatrical social ritual produce layers of performance that allow the play to create representational space capable of circumventing traditional power structures. The Reflexive Scaffold argues that this relationship between metatheatricality and restaged moments of culture is central to interrogating the complexities of dramatic genre on the English Renaissance stage. This project asserts that a great deal of early modern English drama begins to experiment with staged moments of cultural performance: social, cultural, and religious events, which have distinct ramifications and efficacy both for the audience and in the world of the play. However, while these restaged social rituals become focal points within a given narrative, their function is determined by the genre of the play in which they appear. A play or a feast inserted into a comic narrative creates a very different sort of efficacy within the world of the play from that which is created when the same moment appears in a tragic narrative. These various types of performance give us a glimpse into the ways that early modern English dramatists understood the relationship between their works and the audiences who viewed them. I argue that the presentation and reinterpretation of early modern social ritual is utilized by many of the major playwrights of the English Renaissance, including Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Kyd, John Marston, Thomas Middleton, and Philip Massinger to redefine genre. These moments of reflexivity construct efficacy that, depending on the genre in which they appear, runs the gambit from reinforcing social order to directly critiquing the dominant cultural discourse.

Contemporary Ambulatory Theatre and Audience Agency explores recent productions that encourage individual audience members to move through large, public spaces in new ways, developing a sense of ambulatory agency as they explore their theatrical environments. It focuses on four objects of study: Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth wrapped in the aesthetic of Alfred Hitchcock films and staged for mask-wearing audiences inside three New York warehouse spaces; Blast Theory’s A Machine To See With, which guides audiences through a neighborhood on a supposed bank heist using their mobile phones and has been restaged in nine different cities; Street Corner Society’s Subway Orpheus, a loose adaptation of Ovid’s mythic story in which audience members travel between stations on Boston’s MBTA system; and David Levine’s Private Moment, a series of eight scenes from films shot in Central Park performed by live actors on continuous loops in the exact locations where they were filmed. Contemporary Ambulatory Theatre and Audience Agency uses performance theory, the author’s own experiences of the works, and interviews and statements by practitioners and audience members to determine why artists and audiences are so attracted to new forms of ambulatory agency and how these pieces and others produce them. It argues that, recently, performances like Private Moment have inverted prior understandings of audience agency, treating the individual audience member as the protagonist of their own theatrical event and utilizing performers and other inhabitants of public space to help them exercise this newfound agency. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 10, 2018. / Includes bibliographical references. / Mary Karen Dahl, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Daniel Aaron Sack, Professor Co-Directing Dissertation; Karen L. Laughlin, University Representative; Elizabeth A. Osborne, Committee Member; Patrick Timothy McKelvey, Committee Member.

The South is a region of mystery, of tradition, of shifting identity. As a cultural region within the United States, the South has always defined (and redefined) itself in such a way that it remains distinctive from, even oppositional to, mainstream American culture. All too often, however, this identity redefinition casts the South as an outsider culture, a comic extreme, or a tradition-bound cultural backwater. In recent years, this process has stagnated within Southern culture and the theatrical arts that simultaneously shape and reflect Southern identity. This dissertation reinvigorates the South's historical process of redefinition in the face of the postmodern complexity facing the region. As dramatic representations of the region are limited to a select historical canon, the first element of this reinvigoration is the need for contemporary representations of Southernness in the theatre and festivals of the region. Thus, this dissertation identifies several new Southern playwrights (including Hilly Hicks, Steve Murray, Shay Youngblood, Elizabeth Dewberry, Bob Devon-Jones, Glenda Dickerson, and Breena Clarke) and their plays' construction and reconstruction of Southern culture. These plays are then examined through framework of the New Southern Gothic (NSG) mode, a model of community representation that places seemingly contradictory or oppositional elements in a flexible structure of community and potential for social, cultural, and political development The characteristics of this NSG genre are then looked at in the larger cultural context of Southern history and the issues facing the region today. They are used to evaluate the limited potential of existing Southern representations (such as that put forth by the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival.) Then, newer, more flexible models of Southernness are drawn from NSG plays. These NSG models provide the basis for envisioning a future cultural identity for the South that preserves its distinctiveness while avoiding the trap of homogenization, fetishization, and historicization that characterize traditional representations of the region. These new models also provide a communal basis for Southerners to join forces while acknowledging their differences. From the stage to regional festivals to the public arena, these models can then be used to enact social and cultural change within the region. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Theatre in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2004. / March 26, 2004. / Southern Gothic, Drama, Community, South / Includes bibliographical references. / Carrie Sandahl, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jean Graham-Jones, Outside Committee Member; Anita Gonzalez, Committee Member.

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<p> &ldquo;The Art of Information Management&rdquo; explores the ways that information technologies influence thought and take shape in imaginative works of literature at the turn of the seventeenth century in early modern England, from 1580 to 1605. Imaginative literature becomes a space for articulating the challenges presented by discourses perceived to have been unalterably expanded and amplified through technology, as well for experimenting with strategies to respond to those challenges.</p><p> Drawing on studies of early modern Materialism, New Historicism, Literary History, Digital Humanities, and Media Archeology, this project seeks to move the understanding of the role information technologies as agents of change forward by relocating debates concerning technology to the spaces imagined in early modern English literature of the fantastic: Thomas Nashe&rsquo;s multi-modal London and ocean-sanctuary Yarmouth, Edmund Spenser&rsquo;s Faery Land, William Shakespeare and Robert Armin&rsquo;s holiday Kingdom of Illyria, and Samuel Daniel&rsquo;s pastoral Arcadia. In each imagined space, this project looks at the printing press and beyond to attendant technologies in order to develop a better understand of the period&rsquo;s relationship to our own. </p><p> The works considered here expose a moment of feverish innovation with regard to the rhetorical construction of authenticity, political expression, and right behavior. The first two chapters argue that the writings of Thomas Nashe and Edmund Spenser reflect a heightened sensitivity to the speed and timings associated with technologically-mediated discourse. The final two chapters examine the efforts of William Shakespeare, Robert Armin, and Samuel Daniel, as they sort through the solidifying perception of discourse structures outpacing traditional modes of thought and learning.</p>

<p>In my dissertation, <i>De la pen&iacute;nsula Ib&eacute;rica a Italia: concepci&oacute;n y pr&aacute;ctica teatral de las primeras comedias castellanas </i>, I analyze the formation of early modern Spanish comedia, in the context of Italo-Iberian cultural exchanges. My aim is to incorporate the most popular Spanish plays of the first half of the sixteenth century into the larger scenario in which they belong: one that we could name the "formation of the genre of comedy". Works such as Juan del Encina's<i> Eclogues </i>, <i>La Celestina</i> (<i>The Spanish Bawd</i>), and Torres Naharro's <i>Tinellaria</i> and <i>Soldadesca</i> are seen in this light as milestones in a complex thread of contributions leading to the development in the seventeenth century of a Spanish Golden Age "national theater", and specifically in Lope de Vega comedia nueva, as well as to the Italian <i>commedia erudita</i>. Such a reconstruction has long been neglected due to the constitution of the Hispanic and the Italian literary studies, and the asymmetry between the Spanish and the Italian literary traditions, especially regarding the primacy of Italian "comedies" and "authors" in the constitution of a history of "western comedy". </p><p> The formation of the genre of comedy it is seen in a new light within a textual and bibliographical history, grounded in the relationships among authors, printers, and readers. Cultural and merchant networks established between the Iberian and Italian Peninsulas helped to widespread not only books as commodities, but ideas and forms (genres) contained within them that would appeal to new audiences and readers. In my second chapter, I have reconstructed the possible ways in which these plays could have been represented, in contexts such as Alba de Tormes and Rome, by means of the analysis of internal text evidence (prompts, or configuration of the different scenes) and the extant records, both about its actual performances, and other contemporary spectacles. In order to make sense of the scarce available data, I have delved into architectural treatises (Vitruvio, Alberti, Peruzzi, Serlio), woodcuts, and extant Roman documents on contemporary theatrical performances. As a result of this reconstruction, Encina's latest plays, as well as Naharro's <i>Soldadesca</i> and <i> Tinellaria</i>, appear as deeply rooted in the avant-garde conception of the urban Roman scene, they share both techniques, and scene conceptions with avant-garde Italian authors. In my third chapter, I studied the function that comedies, such as Naharro's <i>Tinellaria</i> and <i> Soldadesca</i>, had at the time, insisting on the religious and political denunciations contained in them, as well as in their relationship with some discourses originating in the Lateran council. As a result of that, I have been able to delimit the circles, critical with the papacy of Julius II, in which these ideas originated, together with the political interests of those that voiced them. </p>

<p> Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, along with most other female creators of musicals, remain in the shadows, in spite of an increased focus by the media on women&rsquo;s contributions to society. The messages of Cryer and Ford&rsquo;s dramatic themes and songs have not been fully understood by many critics and audience members. Scholarly and popular writings on women in theater remain scarce, and literature on Cryer and Ford contains errors and promotes misunderstandings. </p><p> In this thesis, I argue that Gretchen Cryer and Nancy Ford, a writer and composer of musical theater respectively, tackled contemporary issues in their Broadway and off Broadway musicals, introduced new theatrical forms and musical genres to the stage, and have built a distinguished collaborative career and earned a meritorious position in musical theater heritage by incorporating these issues, in particular, those which pertain to women or those which affect women, into their works. I seek to correct and build upon extant writings and information from media resources. My thesis is the first monograph to detail the lives and works of Cryer and Ford, and to assess their contributions to the musical theater genre. My detailed case studies dissect several Cryer and Ford musicals, which speak directly to prominent images and ideas of the time, and reveal how their works emphasize the importance of interpersonal communication, and endorse humanism and, in particular, feminism. Cryer and Ford are trailblazers for other female musical writers, for whom they have advocated, and for whom I provide a comprehensive overview.</p><p>

<p> This dissertation examines the development of Germany's municipal theatres from an institutional perspective, focusing on the ways in which formal and informal agreements such as laws, contracts, and social conventions formed the institutional framework that characterizes this type of theatre. Since local government support is a defining feature of municipal theatres, the question why German cities started subsidizing theatres in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries receives close attention throughout this study. </p><p> The introductory chapter reviews theoretical arguments for and against public arts subsidies and develops a rigorous typology of theatres in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Germany. Chapter 2 traces the development of the theatre industry in Germany between 1875 and 1929 based on the annual publications of the German Stage Workers' Union (Genossenschaft deutscher B&uuml;hnen-Angeh&ouml;riger). Statistical analysis of the relationship between the emergence of publicly subsidized theatres and variables such as population size, employment, religion, and geographic location informs the selection of a diverse set of case studies. </p><p> The case studies are presented in paired comparisons in chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 3 examines two major commercial centers, Hamburg and Frankfurt a.M.; chapter 4 focuses on two industrial cities, Krefeld and Chemnitz; and chapter 5 compares two smaller municipalities, Bautzen and Passau. Each chapter begins with an overview of the cities' respective theatre histories, which is followed by detailed analyses of the debates that took place at key turning points in the institutional development of the municipal theatres. To close, each chapter highlights factors that significantly shaped the developments in each case. </p><p> The final chapter concludes that subsidized municipal theatres were not introduced as part of a cohesive cultural policy; rather, municipal governments granted support for theatres in response to specific, local predicaments. Funding decisions were often reached as short-term solutions to immediate concerns, with little thought given to theoretical justifications or long-term consequences. Organizational deficiencies in joint-stock theatre companies, the growing influence of labor unions, heightened nationalism and the controlled economy during World War One, and the political rise of the working class all significantly contributed to the institutional development of municipal theatres.</p>