The following thesis navigates the artistic ideas and concepts, design process, and execution of Paul Deziel’s projection design for Maryland Opera Studio at the University of Maryland – College ...Park’s production of Zaubernacht and Mahagonny-Songspiel, an opera double bill. The production opened April 5th, 2019 in the Kogod Theatre at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Zaubernacht was composed by Kurt Weill with the libretto by Wladimir Boritsch, and conducted by Tiffany Lu; Mahagonny-Songspiel was composed by Kurt Weill with the libretto by Bertolt Brecht, and conducted by Craig Kier. The double bill was directed by David Lefkowich, with scenic design by Ryan Fox, costume design by B. Benjamin Weigel, and lighting design by Christopher Brusberg.
David Shepard had an uncanny sense for where lost films were lurking. As archivist for the American Film Institute in the late 1960s, he had the enviable job of driving around America in search of ...lost films -- and by that time a great many were lost. He was a colleague of mine at the American Film Institute, and he let me accompany him on several film hunts. I remember him pulling a two-thousand-foot can off a shelf, blowing dust and debris off it, and revealing a tinted original 35mm print of Chaplin's masterpiece The Rink (1916).
Safety Last! (Fred C. Newmeyer & Sam Taylor, 1923)/The Blacksmith (Buster Keaton & Malcolm St. Clair, 1922)/The Immigrant (Charlie Chaplin, 1917)/Max se Marie (aka, Max’s Divorce Case) (Max Linder & ...Lucien Nonguet) (1911) It was time again for another of the bi-annual Film Society silent screenings before the usual packed-out crowd of infidels seated at the pews of the Westmount Park United Church. Because this time it was a series of shorts by a number of those brilliant physical comedians of the silent era of yore, I knew my now 13-year old daughter would get a kick out of revisiting her favourite comedian Chaplin doing his thing. While I’m always a bit iffy (at best) about these kinda mass audience ‘judging of artists’ things, it’s always been done with the Film Society in a jovial spirit of celebrating the musicians (they all get some pretty hefty applause), rather than just isolating a ‘victor’ (though, of course, that is inevitably what happens)… so it could be worse – at least it’s not the Academy Awards where we then have to listen to some weeping narcissist give an acceptance speech how ‘humbled’ she/he/non-gender identifier are at winning (I don’t know… somehow that doesn’t quite seem like a particularly ‘humbling’ moment to me – now, falling down in a dirty pool of water as my pants split open revealing my flaccid penis and a geyser of the diarrhea I’ve been desperately holding back shoots out, all with the girl of my dreams looking on with a crowd pointing and laughing – that I’d call humbling. ...not least, as a special treat – a 7-minute 16mm relic of a little remembered silent comedian named Max Linder — who not only pre-dated the celebrated three, but was often cited by them as a major influence – was shown.
This dissertation asks its readers to trace a path through ambulatory performances of recent and not-so-recent history. Ambulatory performance is the term I employ in this project to denote ...performances that move the body—not just walking, but crawling, strolling, meandering, marching, commuting, or hiking. By tracking and marking patterns and trends in a selected genealogy of ambulatory performance, I attempt to reveal new conceptual pathways between and within works that an audience might otherwise view as practically and philosophically distinct. I approach these performances with the driving question of: why walk (or crawl, or march)? In my investigation into potential answers to this inquiry, I put forth the argument that ambulatory performance is an epistemological method of inquiry as well as an object of study, and that the motion of ambulatory performance is necessary for the creation of meaning that shifts contextually as the ground beneath the performers is pushed away.In a qualitative, critical analysis, each chapter uses a performance studies analytic to walk through at least two ambulatory performances (or performance movements) as objects for study. The first object examined in each chapter is a foundational performance or performance movement: flânerie, situationist practices, the performance of everyday life, and military drill; the closing practices are a more focused ambulatory performance to which I apply some of the theories that the larger performance reveals. Almost every performance considered in this project takes place outside of the theatrical stage—in fact, outside of any building entirely—with the exception of Testament’s Black Men Walking, discussed in Chapter Four.In the first chapter, I detail my methodology, provide an overview of extant literature on ambulatory performance, and preview the remaining chapters of this dissertation. Chapter Two identifies liminal practices within paradoxes formed by walking performance, beginning with modernity’s flâneur and concluding with Helen Scalway’s attempted contemporary flânerie. In Chapter Three, I identify and analyze moments of the Situationist practice of détournement in Rimini Protokoll’s 2013 ambulatory performance, Remote Berlin. In the fourth chapter I pinpoint problems in ascribing a performance of everyday life onto others’ bodies and analyze two performances that in some way respond to those problems: Pope.L’s Conquest and Testament’s Black Men Walking. Chapter Five draws a connection between the United States Military’s geopolitical performance of security and one walk that undermines that performance, Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s Border Walk. The conclusion of this project looks forward to the future of theatre in a pandemic and post-pandemic world, and argues that ambulatory performance is well suited to meet the challenge of producing theatre in a world where we no longer sit side-by-side with strangers. I also call for increased cross-disciplinary scholarship on ambulatory performance. Taken together, these chapters construct a theoretical cartography of ambulatory performance that underscores the body’s movement as an essential component in the construction of meaning.
Christian cinema, peculiarly, Christian comedy, is an established subgenre of comedy films. With an established niche audience, the standard of excellence in Christian filmmaking is explored. The aim ...of this thesis is to analyze the correlation between the art of the secular comedy film genre and the Christian and family-oriented comedy films, and their respective effect on today’s society.To establish the validity of the impact of comedy on today’s society, there was a determinate difference between mainstream comedy styles and the subgenre of Christian comedy. This determination made through film reviews, interviews with filmmakers, writers, and producers, as well as box-office sales, established the industry standard and expectation.In conclusion, while Christian comedy films have a small body of work, family-oriented comedies and Christian comedies have a mutual objective in creating wholesome subject matter. More notably, family-oriented films, particularly animated films, are more impactful and well-received by mass audiences, while secular comedies strive to make their mark through controversy, escapism, and political and social satire.The polarization of American culture has negatively affected the mass appeal of secular comedy in all its forms. This thesis proves that family-oriented comedies and animated films fare better with critics, audiences, and box-office sales. Based on critical and audience reviews, the production value of these films is an important factor in whether these films appeal to audiences and critics.
W. G. Sebald and Patrick Modiano are two contemporary authors who share similar themes and literary practices. They are both fastidiously or even obsessively historical in their narrative ...development. And they seem preoccupied with the sins of World War II. Critics have divided feelings about their accomplishments. Skeptics say their trauma narratives induce despair, are complicated for complication’s sake, and overstate trauma’s imperviousness to healing. Advocates say their fictions bring to the present with emotional immediacy historical injustices that have yet to be fully reckoned with. This essay argues that Sebald’s Austerlitz (2001) and Modiano’s Dora Bruder (1997) do important political work in their fastidious historical narratives. In recreating the suffering of the past, these authors pull their readers into participating in acts of historical reparation, which are critical to social progress.
The role of a designer in a theatrical production influences the audience’s understanding of time, place, character, and mood. A costume designer uses costumes to express a character’s personality, ...emotions, socioeconomic status, and other traits that define who that character is. A media designer can influence the mood, sense of time and reality, and place. Both of these design roles have an impact in how a theatrical story is told, what an audience understands visually, and has the power to create magic on the stage. As the story grows and transforms, the costume and media of a production must also follow this path–aging, maturing, regressing, swelling, shrinking, ebbing. The utilization of these elements and principals by the designer allow an audience to fall deep within the world of a play and find out why that particular story is being told and what is the meaning within that story. Inspiration for both costume and media designers can come from paintings, photographs, sculpture, the colors and textures in nature, and even writing. A designer understands how even the small details put on stage impacts the audience’s understanding of the play.
