Screening Diversity: Women & Work in Twenty-First-Century Popular Culture

Screening Diversity: Women and Work in Twenty-first Century Popular Culture explores contemporary representations of diverse professional women on screen. Audiences are offered successful women with limited concerns for feminism, anti-racism, or economic justice. I introduce the term viewsers to describe a group of movie and television viewers in the context of the online review platform Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and the social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. Screening Diversity follows their engagement in a representative sample of professional women on film and television produced between 2007 and 2015. The sample includes the television shows, Scandal, Homeland, VEEP, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Wife, as well as the movies, Zero Dark Thirty, The Proposal, The Heat, The Other Woman, I Don’t Know How She Does It, and Temptation. Viewsers appreciated female characters like Olivia (Scandal), and Maya (Zero Dark Thiry) who treated their work as a quasi-religious moral imperative. Producers and viewsers shared the belief that unlimited time commitment and personal identification were vital components of professionalism. However, powerful women, like The Proposal’s Margaret and VEEP’s Selina, were often called bitches. Some viewsers embraced bitch-positive politics in recognition of the struggles of women in power. Women’s disproportionate responsibility for reproductive labor, often compromises their ability to live up to moral standards of work. Unlike producers, viewsers celebrated and valued that labor. However, texts that included serious consideration of women as workers were frequently labelled chick flicks or soap operas. The label suggested that women’s labor issues were not important enough that they could be a topic of quality television or prestigious film, which bolstered the idea that workplace equality for women is not a problem in which the general public is implicated. Emerging discussions of racial injustice on television offered hope that these formations are beginning to shift.

W.A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte An Arrangement and Performance Edition for Wind Instruments and Vocal Soloists

The purpose of this dissertation is to produce a new Harmonie arrangement of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte suitable for modern performance, bringing Joseph Heidenreich’s 1782 arrangement—one of the great treasures of the wind repertoire—to life for future performers and audiences. I took advantage of the capabilities of modern wind instruments and performance techniques, and employed other instruments normally found in the modern wind ensemble to create a work in the tradition of Heidenreich’s that restored as much of Mozart’s original thinking as possible. I expanded the Harmonie band to include flute and string bass. Other instruments provide special effects, a traditional role for wind instruments in the Classical opera orchestra. This arrangement is conceived to be performed with the original vocal soloists, making it a viable option for concert performance or for smaller staged productions. It is also intended to allow the wind players to be onstage with the singers, becoming part of the dramatic action while simultaneously serving as the “opera orchestra.” This allows creative staging possibilities, and offers the wind players an opportunity to explore new aspects of performing. My arrangement also restores Mozart’s music to its original keys and retains much of his original wind scoring. This arrangement expands the possibilities for collaboration between opera studios, voice departments or community opera companies and wind ensembles. A suite for winds without voices (currently in production) will allow conductors to program this major work from the Classical era without dedicating a concert program to the complete opera. Excerpted arias and duets from this arrangement provide vocalists the option of using chamber wind accompaniment on recitals. The door is now open to arrangements of other operas by composers such as Mozart, Rossini and Weber, adding new repertoire for chamber winds and bringing great music to life in a new way.

The Drama of History: Representation and Revolutionaries in Haitian Theater, 1818-1907

Since the beginning of the Haitian theatrical tradition there has been an ineluctable dedication to the representation of Haitian history on stage. Given the rich theatrical archive about Haiti throughout the world, this study considers operas and plays written solely by Haitian playwrights. By delving into the works of Juste Chanlatte, Massillon Coicou, and Vendenesse Ducasse this study proposes a re-reading of Haitian theater that considers the stage as an innovative site for contesting negative and clichéd representations of the Haitian Revolution and its revolutionary leadership. A genre long mired in accusations of mimicking European literary forms, this study proposes a reevaluation of Haitian theater and its literary origins.

Sexism and Imperialism in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Puccini's Madama Butterfly, and Blitzstein's Regina: A Performance Study

This dissertation project comprises three major operatic performances and an accompanying document; a performance study which surveys aspects of sexism and imperialism as represented in three operas written over the last three centuries by examining the implications of prejudice through research as well as through performances of the major roles found in the operas. Mr. Eversole performed the role of Sharpless in the 2014 Castleton Festival production of Madama Butterfly (music by Giacomo Puccini, libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa), conducted by Bradley Moore. In 2015, Mr. Eversole sang the title role in four performances of Mozart and Da Ponte’s Don Giovanni with the Maryland Opera Studio at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, conducted by Craig Kier. Also as part of the Maryland Opera Studio 2015-16 season, Mr. Eversole appeared as Oscar Hubbard in four performances of Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman’s 1939 play, The Little Foxes. These performances were also conducted by Craig Kier. The accompanying research document discusses significant issues of cultural, geographical, and sexual hegemony as they relate to each opera. It examines the plots and characters of the operas from a postcolonial and feminist perspective, and takes a moral stance against imperialism, sexism, domestic abuse, and in general, the exploitation of women and of the colonized by the socially privileged and powerful. Recordings of all three operas can be accessed at the University of Maryland Hornbake Library. They are: Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (the role of Sharpless) July 20, 2014, Castleton Festival production, Bradley Moore, Conductor Castleton, Virginia Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni (title role) November 22nd, 2015, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMD Marc Blitzstein’s Regina, (Oscar Hubbard) April 8th, 8016, Maryland Opera Studio, Craig Kier, Conductor Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, UMD