Researching Popular Entertainment

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. This 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 emphasises 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.

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 and Performance Studies at the School of Media, Arts and Humanities in the University of Sussex, UK. He served as co-convenor of the Popular Entertainments Working Group with the International Federation for Theatre Research from 2018 to 2024.

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 De Simone 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. TEXTS 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? Re-enacting 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