Ryan Randle

Overview

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in the Medieval Studies Program with a graduate minor in Media Studies at Cornell University, where I will defend my dissertation, “Materializing Special Effects in Early English Drama” in May 2027, which focuses on the material culture and production histories of early English drama (ca. 1400–1640).

In my dissertation, I examine the labor and laborers responsible for the execution of special effects on the early English stage, approaching them as a medium of audio-visual expression assembled from materials, tools, methods, techniques, and human-object engagements. This endeavor is complicated by a multitude of absences, as most theatrical properties, costumes, staging apparatuses, or stagecraft technologies from medieval and early modern theatre do not survive. I address these gaps in two ways. First, I draw on textual data from payment contracts, theatrical production inventories, civic account ledgers, artisan guild records, and eyewitness accounts to excavate aspects of dramatic production and performance inaccessible through extant playtexts alone. Second, I draw on critical and popular discourse surrounding special effects in postmodern horror cinema (ca. 1960–1990) to animate the material possibilities latent in the textual data of special effects on the early English stage. In doing so, I argue that medieval and early modern playmakers conceived of special effects as both theatrical and literal commodities, revealing the dramatic function of spectacle and the sociopolitical and cultural value of the (in)visible labor and laborers involved.

In my first chapter, I collate terminology used to describe special effects by medieval and early modern playmakers to situate my use of the term in the context of the early English stage. Each of the following three chapters focuses on different special effects, such as SFX makeup, decapitations, or amputations in the Chester Adam and Eve, a pageant dedicated to St. Thomas Becket, and Titus Andronicus, using analogous special effects from Alien, the Friday the 13th franchise, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre Part II, respectively, as initial framing devices. These case studies and their supporting primary sources span medieval and early modern periodizations, drawing new connections between both dramatic traditions through their shared stagecraft technologies and techniques.

Research Focus

• Early English Theatre (c. 1350-1640) 
• Postmodern Horror Cinema (c. 1960-1990) 
• Theatre & Cinema Industry History 
• Material Culture Studies 
• Horror Studies 
• Production Studies

Courses Taught:

MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: “The Medea Myth from Ancient Greece to the Middle Ages”

MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: “Conjuring Horror in Medieval Literature”

MEDVL 1101: FWS: Aspects of Medieval Culture: “Conjuring Horror in the Premodern"