The Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement is a well-documented period in which artistic output by the black community in Harlem, New York, and beyond, surged. On the heels of Reconstruction, a generation of black artists and intellectuals—often the first in their families born after the thirteenth amendment—spearheaded the movement. Using art as a means by which to comprehend and to reclaim aspects of their identity which had been stolen during the Middle Passage, these artists were also living in a time marked by the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan and segregation. It stands to reason, then, that the work that has survived from this period is often rife with political and personal motivations. Male figureheads of the movement are often remembered for their divisive debate as to whether or not black art should be politically charged. The public debates between men like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke often overshadow the actual artistic outputs, many of which are relegated to relative obscurity. Black female artists in particular are overshadowed by their male peers despite their significant interventions. Two pioneers of this period, Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880-1966) and Eulalie Spence (1894-1981), will be the subject of my thesis. Both artists, whose work is in close conversation, were innovators in their field. In this thesis I will argue that black women like Johnson and Spence were true innovators during the Harlem Renaissance/New Negro Movement despite the fact that men like Locke and Du Bois are often seen as its figureheads. Johnson and Spence are salient examples for two key reasons. First, their work represents a false dichotomy—art vs. propaganda—which I will endeavor to refute. Second, their work, despite its differences, engages with many of the same themes related to feminism and intersectionality. While there has been an influx of research into the lives and work of such women as Johnson and Spence in recent years, my aim is to furthe (open full item for complete abstract)

This thesis explores Donald Margulies's play, Found a Peanut, and takes steps to dramaturgically link it to Robert Skloot's Theatre of the Holocaust, through both research and a staged production of the play. The paper examines Jewish Identity in modern American in theatre, specifically in the works of Donald Margulies, and unravels how Jewish playwrights insert trauma into their work. Combining together the theoretical analysis of Robert Skloot's works, the dramaturgical research of Margulies, and the process of staging Found a Peanut at Miami University, this project is an example of how to both mount and direct a modern Jewish American play that lies in the Theatre of the Holocaust.

This project examines the evolution of Anne Frank's image among the American public throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and analyzes how this public perception was influenced by the theatrical interpretation of the diarist's story. Examining the theatrical interpretation of the story from its creation through the modern day reveals that the intentional manufacturing of Anne Frank's characterization specific to American audiences of the 1955 production significantly affected public understanding of the historical story and continues to complicate the public's relationship with the play's heroine. This evolving relationship has been highlighted particularly through analysis of the original script's creation, public reactions to the various incarnations of the script over time, comparisons between the major script adaptations, and case studies that demonstrate twenty-first century attitudes toward the play. By illustrating the influence of the 1955 dramatization of "The Diary of Anne Frank" on the American public's perception of the historical story, this research draws attention to the areas in which historicity was sacrificed for the sake of marketing the production and ultimately highlights the importance of the theatrical interpretation in shaping Anne Frank's iconic role in American culture.

In the first decades of the twentieth century, critics like H.L. Mencken and Van Wyck Brooks vociferously expounded a profound disenchantment with American art and culture. At a time when American popular entertainments were expanding exponentially, and at a time when European high modernism was in full flower, American culture appeared to these critics to be at best a quagmire of philistinism and at worst an oxymoron. Today there is still general agreement that American arts “came of age” or “arrived” in the 1920s, thanks in part to this flogging criticism, but also because of the powerful influence of European modernism.Yet, this assessment was not unanimous, and its conclusions should not be taken as foregone. In this dissertation, I present crucial case studies of Constance Rourke (1885-1941) and Gilbert Seldes (1893-1970), two astute but understudied cultural critics who saw the same popular culture denigrated by Brooks or Mencken as vibrant evidence of exactly the modern American culture they were seeking. In their writings of the 1920s and 1930s, Rourke and Seldes argued that our “lively arts” (Seldes' formulation) of performance – vaudeville, minstrelsy, burlesque, jazz, radio, and film – contained both the roots of our own unique culture as well as the seeds of a burgeoning modernism. In their analysis, Rourke and Seldes stood against easy conceptual categories (especially “highbrow vs. lowbrow”) that did not account for the richness of American culture. Both resisted the tendency to evaluate American art by the standards of European modernism. And by foregrounding matters of race and ethnic identity (even when they dealt imperfectly with them), they showed popular entertainment to be a matter of national significance. Indeed, against the received wisdom that modern American culture depended upon the pervasive spread of European modernism, they argued that American popular performance itself was the necessary foundation for our modern culture. Most importan (open full item for complete abstract)

This study identifies and analyzes the factors that controlled the production and determined the success or failure of African American original screenplays and stage plays adapted into films in the United States of America during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Until we understand how economics and race intersect to create the vicious cycle of the perceived failure of African American films, the current system will ensure the continuous devaluing of African Americans and their work in the film industry. This dissertation documents data from 1,716 African American feature films and other films featuring African Americans. This data is analyzed in the context of the investment criteria used by Hollywood executives. The criteria are investigated in the context of cultural politics in order to identify the intersections of economics and race to better explore the crisis that African Americans face in the film industry. Each chapter and section answers specific questions related to the economic and cultural performance of original screenplays and stage plays adapted into film. Each chapter and section answers the following questions: What factors controlled the production of African American films from 1980 to 2000? What roles did African Americans play in the process? How do these factors affect the cultural and economic outcome of the film? This study provides a new approach to analyzing African American films.

Throughout the United States, thousands of festivals, like St. Patrick's Day in New York City or the Greek Festival and Oktoberfest in Columbus, annually celebrate the ethnic heritages, values, and identities of the communities that stage them. Combining elements of ethnic pride, nostalgia, sentimentality, cultural memory, religous values, political positions, economic motive, and the spirit of celebration, these festivals are well-organized performances that promote a community's special identity and heritage. At the same time, these festivals usually reach out to the larger community in an attempt to place the ethnic community within the American fabric. These festivals have a complex history tied to the “melting pot” history of America. Since the twentieth century many communities and ethnic groups have struggled to hold onto or reclaim a past that gradually slips away. Ethnic heritage festivals are one prevalent way to maintain this receding past. And yet such festivals can serve radically different aims, socially and politically. In this dissertation I will investigate how these festivals are presented and why they are significant for both participants and spectators. I wish to determine what such festivals do and mean. I will examine five Dutch American festivals, three of which are among the oldest ethnic heritage festivals in the United States. My approach to this topic is interdisciplinary. Drawing upon research methods in several disciplines – theatre history, performance studies, theatre semiotics, ethnography and anthropology, folklore, and American history – I will describe and analyze how the social, political, and ethical values of the communities get expressed (performed, acted out, represented, costumed and displayed) in these various festivals. Instead of relying upon the familiar ideas of “the Midwest,” “rural America,” “conservative America,” etc. that are often used in political commentary today, I want to show just how complex and often contrad (open full item for complete abstract)

During the vaudevillian era, the professional careers of all women in popular entertainment operated within and reflected the complex social and cultural tensions surrounding ideas about women's increased participation in public, political, and social life. For the purposes of this study, I bracket the female performers who personified the idealized images of femininity, beauty, and sexuality, and focus instead on the women who performed an oppositional, or transgressive, representation of femininity and American womanhood due to their physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, overt sexuality, or independent, assertive personalities. Representative women of this case study include a diverse group ranging from May Irwin, Marie Dressler, Eva Tanguay, Ethel Waters, Sophie Tucker, and Fanny Brice to the nearly forgotten Cherry Sisters and Trixie Friganza. This dissertation is an examination of the methods used by working women in popular entertainment to negotiate for agency and self-definition, as well as a niche for themselves, within a male-dominated business and society. I draw from Michel de Certeau's theory of strategy and tactics within oppositional power relationships in order to evaluate an entertainer's career as an organic whole: her performance and public personas, marketing and publicity strategies, development of a niche audience, and relative agency in management of her own career. My research project is based on the premise that an analysis of women who exemplified nontraditional femininity in their performances, audience relationships, and career management will reflect the prevailing position of women in American society: their subordinate status, the social constraints and cultural ideologies imposed upon them, the necessity of ongoing renegotiations for autonomy and self-definition, and the strategies and tactics used by women to achieve a measure of agency. Because the women crafted their personas and careers in relation to prevailing id (open full item for complete abstract)

From March 1942 to November 1945, the Stage Door Canteen in New York City provided an estimated 3 million servicemen with companionship, free food, and entertainment. This thesis explores the canteen's work and the meaning assigned to the work by volunteers, servicemen, and the American media. Run by the American Theatre Wing War Service, the canteen provided civilian workers in the entertainment industry with a way to "do their part" for the war effort and repay servicemen for the sacrifice they were making. The canteen was open to United Nations servicemen of any nationality or race, making it an interracial and international contact point. In media, the canteen was frequently used as a symbol of wartime unity and an example of the type of selfless service that American civilians should aspire to. For many canteen volunteers and guests, the canteen incarnated wartime values of American egalitarianism, Allied cooperation, and racial equality. It prompted some civilians and servicemen to think critically about the ideals of democracy, equality, unity, and individual freedom for which the war was purportedly being fought.

In my dissertation, “‘What a Man': The Crisis of Masculinity on the Broadway Musical Stage,” I examine masculinity represented within new, popular, and award-winning Broadway musical productions as a telling example of contemporary culture in the United States. I explore how masculinity is specifically constructed in five productions and how these representations potentially subvert the societal expectations for masculine performance. Through archival research, close reading of the texts and performances, and qualitative interviews with seventeen members of the original productions, I argue that these musicals specifically and intentionally offer alternative views of masculinity that potentially pave the way to end the binary rigidity captured in what masculinity scholars have deemed the “crisis of masculinity.” This crisis addresses the current sociopolitical moment in which men in Western society that are expected to perform their gender in line with one of two binary archetypes: the hypermasculine strong man or the non-masculine effeminate, in actuality, do not fall into either category. The productions I consider, in order of their openings, are Spring Awakening by Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater; The Book of Mormon by Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone; Kinky Boots by Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein; Hamilton: An American Musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda; and Dear Evan Hansen by Benj Pasek, Justin Paul, and Steven Levenson. I draw on theoretical insights from scholars including Fintan Walsh, Michael Kimmel, Judith Butler, Stacy Wolf, and Barbara Herrnstein Smith to ground my work in current disciplinary conversations about gender, performativity, and musical theatre. My chapters explore how traditional qualities of masculinity are performed through these musicals in ways that nevertheless actively grapple with the crisis and challenge representations found in their predecessors. Overall, my aim is to provide insight into how musical theatre has, in recent y (open full item for complete abstract)

White American Theatre has a long history of practicing exclusion. In the summer of 2020, a new collective named We See You White American Theatre formed to create the “BIPOC List of Demands for White American Theatre” and to push for more equitable practice in the American theatre industry. Their 31-page initiative calls for widespread reform in the American theatre community including codified cultural competency, BIPOC recruitment and retention both onstage and off, and greater transparency in funding and hiring. This thesis studies the practice of what I call inward- facing theatre activism— that is, theatre activism that critiques and redresses issues within the industry itself, rather than use theatre as a medium for other modes of social or political activism. I employ a mixed methodology including historical analysis, digital and traditional ethnography, and qualitative interviews, framing my research through the context of political scientist Cathy Cohen's theory of marginalization. Using Cohen's framework, I investigate inward-facing theatre activism as it is situated along a continuum of theatre activism, as it resonates throughout community-specific theatre organizing, and— using We See You White American Theatre as a case study— as it exists within and attempts to disrupt the dialectical relationship between marginalization and resistance in the American theatre. My thesis breaks ground in the study of inward- facing theatre activism in three ways: first, by providing a foundational analysis of marginalization and resistance that will benefit future scholars seeking to study integrative and secondary marginalization processes and the American theatre industry as a microcosm of American politics; second, by connecting Cohen's framework to the study of activism in the American theatre industry to explore how current and future scholars and activists alike might utilize this framework to achieve industrial equity; and third, by developing nascent scholarsh (open full item for complete abstract)

In this document I examine Brazilian composer Marlos Nobre's ballet Rhythmetron, adding to the scholarly literature available on the contributions of Latin American composers to the percussion ensemble repertoire. Using archival, ethnographic, and text-based analyses, I inquire into the genres, instruments, and performance practices of the piece, as well as its critical reception. This history reveals that the colonial relationship with black sound has continuously been re-inscribed in Brazilian cultural artifacts, and that institutional biases are upheld when determining what constitutes Art music. Through its inclusion of the Afro-Brazilian genres of samba and maracatu, Rhythmetron invites us to consider the hierarchies of valuation that govern what constitutes Brazilian popular music, art music, and ballet, revealing racialized power dynamics. I utilize postcolonial theories of hybridity to demonstrate that Rhythmetron dialogues with the Dance Theatre of Harlem's intent to reimagine and break racial expectations in the realm of classical ballet. This research reveals that what is guarded in our cultural memories is power-laden, and shows that more inclusive canonization practices can challenge existing narratives and create new ones.

Education provides a durable foundation for social growth by influencing the environment in which oppression persists. Maurianne Adams and Lee Anne Bell, editors of Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, introduce social justice education as a pedagogical approach that “includes both an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for analyzing multiple forms of oppression and a set of interactive, experiential pedagogical principles to help learners understand the meaning of social difference and oppression, both in social systems and in their personal lives” (Adams et al. ix). This thesis argues that Asian American theater can utilize social justice education pedagogy to promote discussion and education of racial issues in the Asian American community. Theater is a viable alternative to lecture-based learning. Theater can act as a catalyst for dialogue, and can be used to effectively engage with audiences in a way that allows the audience to critically analyze systems of oppression. This thesis aims to connect social justice education methods with Asian American theater so that Asian Americans can better navigate the oppressive systems embedded in mainstream theater and other oppressive systems in their own lives. Many social justice education principles are present and relevant to Asian American theater, and three case studies are analyzed to support this claim, including Ma-Yi Theater Company, Miss Saigon, and Vietgone.

This thesis argues that the reality of vaudeville in its heyday was very different from the sorts of performances the label is associated with today. This is done in part by examining the career of Kitty Doner, the leading male impersonator of her generation. The 1962 movie, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, is reexamined, highlighting its misinterpretation of vaudeville and the supposed reasons for its demise. Finally, a queer genealogy is structured to assert a new label of queer women performance, the Large Butch Crooners. This thesis, using queer and feminist theories and methodologies works to reimagine American vaudeville in the twenty-first-century, as well as looking for new ways to center women performers in its larger histories.

Throughout the United States toward the end of the twentieth century, popular theatre proliferated on the nation's stages and in other entertainment venues: concert halls, comedy clubs, Broadway stages, and more. One of the notable offerings was (and still remains) Blue Man Group, a vaudevillesque performance troupe that plays music, performs scenes, and creates a sense of community amongst the attendees. Though now enjoying enormous mainstream success, Blue Man Group was once a fringe, avant-garde theatre, creating politically charged performances on the streets of New York City for free to those in close proximity. This study examines Blue Man Group's history, from its beginnings through 2001, by looking at how it transitioned from its avant-garde roots into a popular theatre appearing on national television and in front of thousands of spectators each night. Following Mike Sell's assertion that the thorny term "avant-garde" art is "premised on the notion that the modern world--its institutions, its social relations, its art, its cuisines, its economies--is terminally out of joint" (2011, 7), this study seeks to demonstrate that Blue Man Group's first public performances, in the experimental theatre spaces and on the streets of New York City, emerged from a frustration with American culture. I argue that after opening a long-running production in New York, the organization took steps away from its avant-garde roots through questionable business practices and widespread expansion. In turn, I consider the group's recording and releasing an album, which in effect turned its live event into an unchanging experience. I contend that by 2001, Blue Man Group had turned its back on its avant-garde outlook, as is evidenced by its opening of a production in Las Vegas and its appearing in nationally televised commercials for a computer company. In so doing, Blue Man Group eschewed its avant-garde roots while expanding its brand, thereby becoming part of American popular c (open full item for complete abstract)

In this dissertation, I examine the appropriation of Native American cultures and histories in the theatre of the American counterculture of the 1960s and seventies, using the Living Theatre's Paradise Now, the street theatricals and broadsides of the San Francisco Diggers, and James Rado and Gerome Ragni's Hair: The American Tribal-Love Rock Musical as my primary case studies. Defining themselves by points of difference from mainstream America and its traditional social and cultural values, counterculturalists often attempted to align themselves with Native Americans in order to express an imagined sense of shared otherness. Representations of Natives on countercultural stages, however, were frequently steeped in stereotype, and they often depicted Native cultures inaccurately, elided significant tribal differences, and relegated Native identity almost wholly to the past, a practice that was particularly problematic in light of concurrent Native rights movements that were actively engaged in bringing national attention to the contemporary issues and injustices Native Americans faced on a daily basis. In my study, I analyze the impulses that might have led counterculturalists to appropriate Native culture during this period, highlighting some of the ways in which such appropriations played out in Paradise Now and Hair, as well as on the streets of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district. I examine the countercultural tendency to use stereotyped Native characters as mascots for various−and sometimes competing−causes, such as environmentalism, hallucinogenic drug use, communalism, pacifism, and violent activism, and I demonstrate how such mascotry appeared in the theatre of the period. I also interrogate the propagation of the troublesome "vanishing Indian" stereotype during the sixties and seventies, tracing its development into the popular myth of the hippie as reincarnated Native. Finally, I examine Hanay Geiogamah's 1972 play Body Indian as an alternative model (open full item for complete abstract)

Since women first took to the professional stage, actresses have been objects of admiration and condemnation as well as desire and suspicion. Historically marginalized figures, actresses challenged notions of acceptable female behavior by, among other (more scandalous) things, earning their own income, cultivating celebrity, and being sexually autonomous. Performance entailed an economic transaction of money for services provided, inviting the double meanings of "entertainer" and "working" woman. Branding the actress a whore not only signaled her (perceived) sexual availability, but also that she was an unruly woman who lived beyond the pale. The history of the actress in the West is also complicated by the tradition of the all-male stage, which long prevented women from participating in their own dramatic representations and devalued their claim to artistry once they did. Theatrical representations of actresses necessarily engage with cultural perceptions of actresses, which, historically, have been paradoxical at best. In this dissertation I identify a sub-genre of drama that I call actress-plays, and using this bibliography of over 100 titles I chronicle and analyze the actress as a character type in the English-speaking theatre, arguing that dramatizations of the professional actress not only reflect (and fuel) a cultural fascination with actresses but also enact a counter-narrative to conventional constructions of femininity. Using the advent of the actress in the Restoration as a historical touchstone, this study weaves together theatre and women's history, literary criticism, and cultural studies to analyze the ways in which staging the actress highlights and interrogates the complex and layered nature of gendered prejudice that has historically marginalized actresses and thwarted female progress. This dissertation features detailed examinations of key actress-plays from different eras, including but not limited to J. Palgrave Simpson's World and Stage (18 (open full item for complete abstract)

How did The Negro Ensemble Company reconstruct and reframe Black American experience on the stage. This study identifies The Negro Ensemble Company's agenda through a close textual analysis of eight Negro Ensemble Company plays spanning from 1967-1978. The analysis contrasts Amiri Baraka's blueprint for a militant separatist based Black Nationalist Theatre to The Negro Ensemble Company's quest to move beyond the rhetoric of race. Each chapter is organized around specific investigative questions and theories that critically interact with the thematic resonances intoned in each play. Some of the questions considered are the following: How did The Negro Ensemble Company alter the representations of black performativity before and during the early 1960's? What is the link between The Black Arts Movement and The Negro Ensemble Company Movement? How did Black Nationalist theory help The Negro Ensemble Company to reframe black experience? How did the plays produced by The Negro Ensemble Company deconstruct historical black family traditions? How are the tensions of the transatlantic slave trade and primordial origins of the African Diaspora situated in some of these plays? How did The Negro Ensemble Company permanently alter the landscape of Black American Theatre? This dissertation examines The Negro Ensemble Company's deemphasizing of white oppression while probing its restaging of black subjectivity in relation to rather than in opposition to Western paternalism.

This dissertation examines playwright and performer Anna Deavere Smith's critically acclaimed series, On the Road: A Search for American Character. Focusing on the project's thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth installments, Fires in the Mirror: Crown Heights, Brooklyn and Other Identities, Twilight, Los Angeles, 1992, and House Arrest: A Search for American Character In and Around the White House, Past and Present, respectively, this study demonstrates how diversity and doubleness serve as the foundation of Smith's dramaturgical investigation into the relationship between language and character. Smith focuses on communities experiencing socio-political duress and persons whose voices have gone largely unheard within those communities. In collecting, editing, and performing verbatim excerpts from interviews with white, African American, Korean, Latino, and Jewish women and men, Smith's interest in cultural diversity plays a crucial role in fulfilling the mission of On the Road: to make connections between the seemingly disconnected and spark productive discussion about matters of race. Characters in Smith's dramas regularly reveal a sense of double consciousness, to quote W.E.B. Du Bois's influential concept, grappling with their awareness of themselves as racial minorities and how their identities are viewed as “other” by the dominant culture. Furthermore, many events upon which the plays are based are shown to have double meanings and be open to a wide range of interpretation. The same holds true for the imperfect but poetic language employed by characters to describe these events. By presenting a panoply of voices and exploring events from multiple perspectives, Smith investigates how and why disagreements, tensions, failures to understand, and inabilities to communicate have plagued the diverse populations of Crown Heights, Los Angeles, and the United States. This dissertation also explores how Smith's multiple identities as African American, woman, interviewer (open full item for complete abstract)

The purpose of this study is to examine Canadian identity via the development of Canada's modern theatre, to understand its relationship to Nationalism, and to explore the influence of playwright George F. Walker. This thesis functions as a two-part study: first, as a research project that focuses on dramatic constructions of Canadian identity, specifically within the plays of George F. Walker and relating to Benedict Anderson's concept of the “imagined community,” and second, a discussion/analysis of the process of directing George F. Walker's play Better Living and examining the responses of cast, crew, and audience members to this example of Canadian Theatre. Using Anderson's texts, informed observation, and notation of the production process (including: auditioning, rehearsal, direction, performance, and finally a survey to examine audience response) this study examines constructions and perceptions of Canadian Nationalism as communicated through the theatrical production of Better Living.

This creative thesis functions as a two-part exploration of locating the intersection of theory and practice as it relates to the overlapping of theatre, performance, and African American studies. This thesis was accompanied with Miami University's 2010 production of A Song for Coretta. With a specific focus on playwright Pearl Cleage and her play, A Song for Coretta, this thesis examines how African American history, culture, and experiences become an integral part of the total theatre process; be it playwriting, performing, researching, or directing.