Researching Popular Entertainment is an essential volume for scholars delving into the vibrant yet complex world of popular entertainment.
Written by a global network of experts, this book addresses the unique challenges researchers face in this field. The often-dismissed status of popular entertainment, coupled with its reliance on physicality and improvisation over scripted performances, has meant archival and textual sources tend to be more limited than in related theatre and performance disciplines. This scarcity requires historians to find alternative pathways through the available materials to recuperate seemingly insignificant figures and performance forms from our cultural past. The book provides a candid look into the research processes of its authors, highlighting some of the approaches they have adopted to overcome these challenges. It emphasizes that reading performance as entertainment is a deliberate methodological choice. Regardless of whether a work is deemed high or low art, legitimate or illegitimate, understanding how it captivates its audience is central to the study of entertainment.
Readers will benefit from its in-depth analysis and practical guidance, making it an indispensable resource for anyone studying popular entertainment.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
1. Introduction: Entertainment as method
Kim Baston and Jason Price
I. ARCHIVES
2. Alternative Archives in Popular Entertainment Research: The Chinese Exclusion Act case files
Maria DeSimone
3. Like Finding a Needle in a Haystack: Child actors and the archive
Gillian Arrighi
4. Don Juan in Montreal: Investigating music in eighteenth century pantomime
Kim Baston
5. Carry on Curating: Comedy at the V&A
Simon Sladen
II. TEXT
6. In Search of Lost Performances: The challenges of reconstructing a nineteenth-century Karagöz play
Nazli M. Ümit
7. Postcards and Popular Entertainment Studies: Resources and methods
Penny Farfan
8. Seductive Texts: The uses of art as historical evidence
Jason Price
9. Reading Meaning in a Contested Landscape: The challenges of investigating Australian bushranger re-enactments
Janys Hayes
III. BODIES
10. Seeking the Ghost Clari: Creative practice and virtual reality as a method for the revival of nineteenth-century performances in colonial Australia
Jane Woollard
11. Finding Likay through Practice: A research-practitioner’s reflection on specialising in the Thai popular form
Sukanya Sompiboon
12. Pierrots on the Prom: re-enactment, revival and in-heritage transfer in seaside performance
Tony Lidington
13. Funny Then and Now?: Reenacting World War II soldier sketch comedy
Tara Demmy
14. Placing Yourself in Performance Research: A phenomenological approach to investigating stand-up comedy
Yingnan Chu
15. Lip-synching for (some) Life: Researching queer/camp bodies through practice-based methods
Simon Dodi
Index
Biography
Kim Baston is Adjunct Senior Lecturer at LaTrobe University, Australia. She spent many years working as an actor, director, animateur and composer in theatre and film, in the UK and in Australia. Her research interests include the use of music in theatre, applied theatre, circus history and culture, and popular entertainments.
Jason Price is a Reader in Theatre & Performance Studies at the School of Media, Arts and Humanities in the University of Sussex, UK. He is one of the convenors for the International Federation for Theatre Research's Popular Entertainments working group.
