PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2017, College-Conservatory of Music: Music (Musicology)

In the American musical theater, the book musical has always presented a conspicuous alternation of songs and spoken dialogue. The former interrupt the latter and provides additional means to depict the characters and the dramatic situations. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, a second subgenre of the musical came to prominence: the sung-through musical, in which the entire script—monologues, conversations, turning points—all occur in song, eschewing spoken dialogue and contrasting with the aesthetics of the book musical. This dissertation demonstrates that by avoiding spoken dialogue and increasing the amount of music, American sung-through musicals from 1979 until 2004 challenged the means of structuring musicals. This study investigates how creative teams of sung-through musicals have used songs alone to create, organize, and communicate dramaturgy, questioning the limits between singing and speaking in musical theater. This study comprises twelve sung-through musicals that were written and composed in the United States and originally produced in New York City's Broadway or Off-Broadway circuits. It does not consider the British sung-through musicals that were successful on Broadway during the same time period. This study considers songs the main unit of the dramatic action in a sung-through musical and argues that communication occurs through the sequence of songs: an alignment and order of songs that create the dramatic action and assume the functions of dialogues, monologues, and soliloquies. On one hand, this study considers structural similarities that these musicals share: their songs acquire similar dramatic functions, and the sequence of songs can occur in two ways: as a song-cycle or with an embedded-song structure. On the other hand, I investigate changes that each musical went through during its compositional process. Changes made to song content and song order in each of the musicals establish compositional techniques that fu (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: bruce mcclung Ph.D. (Committee Chair); David Carson Berry Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jeongwon Joe Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2016, Theatre and Film

In 1990, Michael L. Quinn, in his essay, “Celebrity and the Semiotics of Acting,” considered celebrity phenomenon—and its growth in the latter part of the 20th century—and the affect it had on media, society, and the role and performance of the actor. Throughout the first fifteen years of the 21st century, there has been a multitude of film and television stars headlining in Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. Despite this phenomena, there is currently an absence of scholarship investigating how the casting of Hollywood stars in stage productions affects those individuals in the theatre audience. In this dissertation, I identify, using a variety of semiotic theories, ways in which celebrity is signified by exploring 21st century Broadway and Off-Broadway productions with Hollywood film and television star casting. Hollywood is an industry that thrives on perpetuating celebrity. Film and television stars are products that need to cultivate a consumer base. Every star in Hollywood has specific attributes that are deemed valuable; these values are then marketed and sold to the public, creating a connection between the star and certain values. A film or television star is an established actor who has received fame and acclaim for a least one role that was critically lauded, or their past roles become a part of their value and product. Throughout the first three chapters of this dissertation, I explore the types of signification that can stem from product, value, and past roles using a variety of productions as case studies: Equus, Orphans, Sister Act: The Musical, Asuncion, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Fences, Godspell, How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying, and The Best Man. The first half of each chapter addresses how significations of product, value, and past roles are established, while the second half of each chapter uses the case studies to demonstrate how these significations made prior to the performance and during the performance can affect the (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Chambers PhD (Advisor); Cynthia Baron PhD (Committee Member); Lesa Lockford PhD (Committee Member); Kristen Rudisill PhD (Other) Subjects: Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies

Master of Music, University of Akron, 2015, Music-History and Literature

A comprehensive history of the development of the music repertoire collectively known as the Great American Songbook. This paper traces the roots of the Songbook from its beginnings with European immigrants. It follows the development and refinement of the American Jazz Standard, tracing its roots from European operetta, to Yiddish theater, and African-American music. Finally, the paper explains how these disparate styles coalesced to create what became the Broadway Musical, following its development from 1920 through 1965 and presenting biographical information on the main contributors to this medium.

Committee: Brooks Toliver Dr. (Advisor); William Guegold Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Black Studies; Fine Arts; Judaic Studies; Mass Media; Minority and Ethnic Groups; Motion Pictures; Music; Music Education; Theater Studies

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2023, College-Conservatory of Music: Music (Musicology)

Orchestral sound has significantly contributed to the legacy of American musical theater, by serving as a fundamental indicator of style, expression, and production. Within the genre's network of collaboration, it is customarily the orchestrator and not the composer who is most responsible for molding a musical's distinct sonic palette realized in its orchestration. While scholarship has begun to address the art and craft of orchestrators in relation to early- and mid-twentieth-century Broadway, the field's development since the 1970s has received little attention. During this period, musical theater's orchestral sound has undergone considerable change, amidst vast shifts in the genre's aesthetics and the rise of a late-capitalist economy that has affected Broadway's institutional practices and labor. This dissertation deconstructs notions of “the Broadway sound” and reconfigures it as something that is constantly transforming. A postmodern perspective of such change not only rejects the teleological continuum that devalues Broadway's post-“Golden Age,” but also foregrounds various qualities that appear as distinct characteristics within contemporary orchestrations. Among the most prominent of these is the advancement of electronic instruments, particularly keyboards, synthesizers, sampler technology, and sequencers. Musical theater's integration of electro-acoustic ensembles also correlates to other facets of postmodernism, including stylistic hybridity and socio-cultural globalization. This study's interdisciplinary framework assesses three interlocking histories: developments of electronic instruments; the aesthetic and ideological tensions concerning liveness and the integration of electronic instruments in acoustic settings; and the dynamics of orchestral labor, pertaining to Broadway's orchestrators and musicians. Topics include scoring techniques, musico-dramatic interactions, production processes, critical reception, and the profiles and influe (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Stephen Meyer Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Jeongwon Joe Ph.D. (Committee Member); David Carson Berry Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, Musicology

From 1989-1999, Walt Disney Animation Studios experienced a period of industrial growth and a return to the artistic ideology of their "Golden Age," resulting in the "Disney Renaissance." The films that comprise this Renaissance represent not only a diverse body of musical works that dominated the cultural landscape of their time, but would soon influence the trajectory of the Broadway musical and popular culture in decades to follow. The theatrically informed compositional ethos of songwriting team Howard Ashman and Alan Menken brought new life to the Disney animated musical, and through their work, would bring about the era of the Disney musical on stage. With the beginning of Disney's Broadway productions in the 1990s and the company's subsequent expansion throughout Times Square through the renovation of and residence in the New Amsterdam Theatre, the impact of Disney's animated musicals ripples throughout popular culture today, bolstered by the company's adaptation strategies and nostalgia-based marketing. In this dissertation, I argue that Howard Ashman and Alan Menken's scores to The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Aladdin (1992) established a new model for the Disney animated musical, defined by musical theatre conventions, and created a distinct sonic identity upon which the company still relies. Chapter One focuses on The Little Mermaid, arguing that Ariel's (speaking and singing) voice represents not only her agency within the arc of the story, but would come to symbolize the new artistic aims of the Disney Renaissance. Chapter Two examines Aladdin's transformation beginning with its Broadway-informed conception, through its filmic realization, and eventually to its Broadway manifestation, centering sexuality, musical orientalism, theatrical influence, and US anxieties about the Middle East in the 1990s. The final chapter centers on Beauty and the Beast and Disney's move into Times Square, analyzing the film's theatrical aspira (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor); Robert Spadoni (Committee Member); Georgia Cowart (Committee Member); Susan McClary (Committee Member) Subjects: Film Studies; Motion Pictures; Music; Theater History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2022, Theatre and Film

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)

Committee: Lesa Lockford Ph.D. (Advisor); Jeffrey Miner Ph.D. (Other); Jonathan Chambers Ph.D. (Committee Member); Michael Ellison Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Gender Studies; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, Musicology

In my dissertation, I examine the Princess Theatre shows within their sociocultural contexts and situate them in relation to the Little Theatre Movement and World War I. I analyze three of the shows – Very Good Eddie (1915), Oh, Boy! and Leave It to Jane (both 1917) – in the context of dramatic integration and the Little Theatre Movement. I apply the philosophy and tenets of the Little Theatre Movement to encourage a fresh viewing of the Princess shows as legitimate theater. The first chapter of my dissertation is a historical and theoretical one synthesizing the writings of many leaders of the Little Theatre Movement and comparing their artistic aims to those of the creative team at the Princess. In this chapter, I explore the relationships among WWI, the Little Theatre Movement, and the American stage (legitimate and musical). The second, third, and fourth chapters are case studies of the three aforementioned shows. Each begins with an account of the events surrounding the writing and premiere of the musical. I conclude that Kern's scores for the Princess Theatre were indeed integrated to a degree unusual for their time, and that impulses which fostered the Little Theatre Movement also shaped the Princess musicals. Ultimately, this project leads musical theater historians to reconsider the place of musicals in relation to the legitimate theatre and the historiography we construct around the “integrated” musical.

Committee: Daniel Goldmark (Advisor); Susan McClary (Committee Member); Georgia Cowart (Committee Member); John Orlock (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Studies; History; Modern History; Music; Performing Arts; Theater; Theater History; Theater Studies

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2017, Theatre Arts

New York's Time Square looked much different in the 1980's than it does today. Drug dealers, prostitutes, and pimps lurked on many street corners. Porn shops and peep shows were the main tourist attractions. Parents kept their children away from the area, fearful of the skyrocketing crime rate. In 1990, the New 42nd Street nonprofit organization was formed in an effort to clean up the city. The organization set out to repair several of the theatres in town including the New Amsterdam Theatre which later became host to Disney's stage version of the popular 1994 animated film The Lion King. As a result, the city was soon reborn. The Disney Theatrical Group has greatly impacted both the development of Times Square and the Broadway theatre scene through technological advances, hiring practices, family values, and marketing to a younger demographic. This project will provide an overview of the Disney Theatrical Group's formation and activities over the past twenty years in order to understand the effects this organization has had on both Times Square and the theatre industry as a whole, and to identify the DTG's place in the current Broadway scene.

Committee: James Slowiak (Advisor); Adel Migid (Committee Member); Christopher Hariasz (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater; Theater History

Master of Music, University of Akron, 2015, Music-Theory

Summary, Data Conclusion: The purpose of the analyses explained in Chapter III was to recognize the relationship, if one exists, between the overlying emotion/purpose of the song and its intervallic complexity. Similarly to classical operatic structure, rock ballads, like arias, often stop time to further explore a singular emotion. The rock musical version of aria's counterpart, recitative, is the rock anthem which is inordinately trying to send a message - often one of passion, angst, or revolt. With a message as powerful as this, the music may fall prey to the text so as not to distract from the persistence of revolution. The Total Average Interval (TAI) data of Tables 5 and 6 indeed shows that the vast majority of songs classified as ballads or anthems lie on opposite ends of the spectrum, with ballads containing the largest intervallic totals and anthems the smallest. Another interesting correlation arose among songs that had repetitive texts. As aforementioned in the background of the study, Leonard Bernstein (famous for both the melodic tritone and the melodic minor seventh in his songs from West Side Story, "Maria" and "Somewhere," respectively), attended a production of Hair when it premiered on Broadway and was said to have walked out at intermission. His objection was that the lyrics reminded him of mere "laundry lists" which is an analysis not lacking in accuracy. Of the songs from Hair analyzed here, three stand out as having a majority of lyrics that incorporate the recitation of a series of nouns: the title song, "Hair," "I Got Life," and "Ain't Got No." "Hair" boasts forty different styles/types of hair, including, "polka-dotted," "confettied," and "spaghettied." In the same fashion, "I Got Life" specifies thirty-five "things we've got," the majority of which are body parts, while "Ain't Got No" spells out thirty-six "things we ain't got," including, "culture," "schoolin'," and a "draft card." When consulting Table 5, it seems that th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nikola Resanovic (Advisor); Brooks Toliver (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

M.M., University of Cincinnati, 2014, College-Conservatory of Music: Music History

The musical Chicago represents an anomaly in Broadway history: its 1996 revival far surpassed the modest success of the original 1975 production. Despite the original production's box-office accomplishments, it received disparaging reviews regarding the cynicism of the work's content. The musical celebrates the crimes and acquittals of two murderesses, and is based on Maurine Dallas Watkins's coverage as a Chicago Tribune reporter of two 1924 murder cases, from which she generated a 1926 Broadway play. The 1975 Broadway production of Chicago: A Musical Vaudeville utilized this historical source material to comment on contemporary American society, highlighting parallels between the U.S. justice system and the entertainment industry, which critics and audiences of the post-Watergate era deemed as too cynical. Although Chicago initially achieved a mixed reception, the revival's producers made few changes to John Kander's music, Fred Ebb's lyrics, and Ebb and Bob Fosse's book, aside from simplifying the title to Chicago: The Musical. This suggests that the musical's newfound success can be attributed to a societal shift in the perception of its subject matter. With further success from Chicago's 2002 film adaptation, the originally dark and sardonic material became a smash hit and found itself as mainstream entertainment at the turn of the millennium. The contrast between the revival's and film adaptation's rave reviews and the musical's initial mixed reception has received little scholarly attention. This thesis provides the most thorough account of Chicago's reception history, which includes a comparison of the critics' reviews of both Broadway productions in addition to a selection of reviews for its first national tour and 2002 film. An interdisciplinary methodology with criminological and sociological theories demonstrates that Chicago's growth in popularity has paralleled American society's changing attitudes towards crime, deviance, and celebrity worship—from (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: bruce mcclung Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Roger Grodsky (Committee Member); Jonathan Kregor Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Music

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2009, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

As the line between rural and urban space have blurred over time, the clarity of this boundary is needed once again. Public transportation, and specifically rail, is one tool that can bring a sense of urbanity back to the city, developing the city about transit stations and the scale of the pedestrian, rather than the nebulous streetscapes and limitless suburbs constructed for the automobile. Following a period of vast over construction in America, people are beginning to reconsider the suburban life and look again at the numerous benefits of city living. Based upon the guidelines of New Urbanism town planning, a new form of urban design has recently emerged. The Transit-Oriented Design (TOD) was founded on the concept that public transit and the pedestrian are the primary design concern within a community. The needs of the automobile should not detract from the environment but rather become integrated within a people-oriented community. Traditionally, TODs have been implemented in suburban locations, in newly planned towns or in generally more remote settings. They offer a newer, and more detached version of what our cities used to offer. It is becoming apparent that TODs must be utilized in order to restore a needed sense of urban living: a pedestrian scaled, dense, urban context. If people have begun to search for a denser urban environment, the downtowns of American cities must act as the model for newer suburban reinterpretation. Cincinnati is among those cities that require drastic downtown re-urbanization. The city has become riddled with expansive parking lots, leaving gaping wounds in the center of the city. One of the largest wounds within the city center is Broadway Commons. Now mostly parking lots, it serves only the automobile, completely disregarding the pedestrian and the urban scale of downtown. The only memory that remains of public transportation and the pedestrian is the Greyhound station, currently in a state of disrepair, with no connection to t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: George Bible (Committee Chair); John Hancock (Committee Chair) Subjects: Architecture; Urban Planning

MARCH, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning : Architecture (Master of)

Highway-adjacent architecture in an urban setting rarely contributes to an interesting city experience. Designers' disregard for the experience of those on the road has numbed the aura of the city and encourages no further exploration into the urban environment. The commuters that downtown enthusiasts complain about have little to persuade them off of the highway and into the city. After years of slow decline, arguably a result of the increased dependency on the automobile, the mid-sized American city is on the cusp of an urban renaissance with a community of urban pioneers reversing the trends of the past half-century and moving back downtown. Although more people are walking the streets and relying on rapid transportation systems, the decisions of the past several generations have made the role of the car in the city permanent. Design must reflect that reality and attempt to affect those on highways just as those within the grid are affected. Passengers and drivers elevated and disconnected from the city and its atmosphere by highways and by speed must be stimulated with an opportunity to observe city life and a reason to desire and seek it. Speed and proximity alter the visual perception of architecture for those on the road. Recognizing and manipulating this alteration through design could produce a more descriptive and meaningful encounter with the city. The typical urban experience from the road can be studied to discover what stimulates the human eye at accelerated speeds and how the results vary with the velocity of speed. The experience of the highway motorist must be understood relative to that of a stop and go motorist, and that of a pedestrian. The amount of visual understanding is different at every level of movement. The gradient of comprehension across the various degrees of motion must be reflected in architectural form and detail in order to maintain an appropriate level of interaction between the build environment and all those who encounter it. An (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jay Chatterjee (Committee Chair); Rebecca Williamson (Committee Co-Chair) Subjects: Architecture

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, Arts Policy and Administration

Since the birth of Broadway in the late 19th and early 20th century, musical theatre has become a special part of America's indigenous cultural heritage and cultural exportation. Broadway has long created its own headliners who made their living performing on stage in front of live audiences night after night and who were lauded for their theatrical prowess. However, beginning in the early 1980s, celebrities most famous for their work in other entertainment media (such as the television, film, and music industries) began to appear on Broadway—both on stage and off—in an effort to capitalize on the celebrities' popular appeal and boost ticket sales. This capitalization on popular celebrity in Broadway musicals has steadily increased since the 1980s, and other uses of celebrity culture, such as adapting popular music and popular films, have also become ubiquitous in the Broadway musical. Through the voices of professionals in the musical theatre industry, this thesis explores how the current trend of Broadway musicals' use of celebrity is affecting the art form of the American musical as an indigenous art form. The methodological approach used is discourse analysis, and 21 professionals in the field were interviewed in an effort to understand the qualitative repercussions of this financially motivated trend. The findings show that participants see the field as being affected both positively and negatively by celebrity on Broadway, and conclusions are made about which effects are most foretelling of what the future could hold for the American musical.

Committee: Wayne Lawson PhD (Advisor); James Bohr MFA (Committee Member) Subjects: Arts Management; Theater

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2006, Theatre and Film

With the end of the Hollywood studio era, big budget blockbuster musicals had to find ways to compete in the economic and cultural marketplace. Historical events such as the rise of television, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Watergate scandal influenced the way American audiences saw, and continue to see, the world. Film, theatre, and other artistic disciplines helped audiences understand, cope, and criticize societal changes. As audience perceptions changed, the film musical faced a crisis. In an attempt to maximize profits, Hollywood business practices forced an evolutionary branch in the development of the musical. One fork took the genre towards the embodiment of capitalistic and cultural excess as pointed to by Altman, Dyer, and others. These film musicals attempt to present Utopia. Film musicals such as Grease (1978), Beauty and the Beast (1991), and Evita (1996) are large spectacles that utilize the high concept business model, as outlined by Justin Wyatt, to please audience expectations by managing conflict at the expense of presenting the story world as a utopia. The other branch of film musical exemplified in the films of Cabaret (1972) and All That Jazz (1979) criticize the price paid by an individual in pursuit of ideals that lie beyond dominant social values. The dystopic film musical connects with audiences and critics by drawing on the cynicism and skepticism of contemporary historic and cultural events to forward a clearly dystopic view of society. This study utilizes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the connection between selected film musicals and the American culture for which they were produced. The study shows that from 1970-2002 film musicals promoted and marketed visions of Utopia that were reflective of specific historical moments rather than ahistorical utopia ideals. While a film like Grease shows that Utopia is the ideal high school experience, later films like Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Chicago (2002) depict i (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Cynthia Baron (Advisor) Subjects: