A Feminist Retelling of William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra Through Music and Essay

 

A Feminist Retelling of William Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Through Music and Essay consists of two integrated components: an original musical composition consisting of underscoring and incidental music for a spoken, non-staged concert-style performance of the play and a scholarly essay that contextualizes and analyzes the creative work. The music, scored for actors and chamber ensemble, utilizes a speech–music continuum, developed from Gary Schmidgall’s concept of “planes of expression,” to shape pacing, dramatic tension, and psychological intensity. Drawing on Lajos Egri’s theories of dramatic structure and Schmidgall’s framework, the music interacts dynamically with the spoken text while preserving the primacy of Shakespeare’s language. The project is informed by a feminist interpretive framework, explored in the accompanying essay, that foregrounds Cleopatra’s political acumen, strategic complexity, and agency while also acknowledging the erotic dimensions of her characterization. A poststructuralist approach further informs the adaptation of the libretto, which restructures the play into three acts through processes of selection and recontextualization, aligning musical and dramatic structure across the work. The score employs recurring motivic material and a near-continuous musical presence to articulate shifts in power, psychological pressure, and emotional intensity, reinforcing the play’s central tension between personal desire and political authority. The accompanying essay situates the work within broader historical and artistic contexts and engages with prior musical settings by Ethel Smyth, Samuel Barber, and John Adams, establishing the dissertation as a distinct interdisciplinary contribution to Shakespeare studies, feminist criticism, and contemporary art music.