Popular performance

'Popular Performance' defines and surveys varieties of performance where the main purpose is to entertain, and where there is no shame in being trivial, frivolous or nonsensical as long as people go home happy at the end of the show. Contributions by new and established scholars focus particularly on how it is made, explaining the techniques of performance and production that make it so appealing to audiences.

Introduction -- Chapter 1 From Domestic Song to Drawing Room Recitation: Dan Leno's Music Hall Repertoire (Caroline Radcliffe, University of Birmingham, UK) -- Chapter 2 American Vaudeville (Leigh Woods, Professor of Theatre, University of Michigan, USA) -- Chapter 3 It's 1922 and at the Munich Kammerspiele Karl Valentin performs Der Christbaumbrettl at Die rote Zibebe (Michael Wilson, Professor of Drama, Loughborough University, UK) -- Chapter 4 Packed from Pit to Ceiling: the Kingston Empire (Adam Ainsworth, Kingston University, UK) -- Chapter 5 Grock: Genius among Clowns (Louise Peacock, University of Hull, UK) -- Chapter 6 Something Wicked: the Theatre of Derren Brown (Michael Mangan, Loughborough University, UK) -- Chapter -- 7 Performing the Burlesque Body: -- The Explicit Female Body as Palimpsest (Dr. Lynn Sally, Metropolitan College of New York, USA) -- Chapter 8 "Hiya Fans!" Celebrity Performance and Reception in Modern British Pantomime (Simon Sladen, V&A Museum, UK) -- Chapter 9 With them, Not at Them (Bim Mason, Circomedia, UK) -- Chapter 10 What's special about stand-up comedy? Josie Long's Lost Treasures of the Black Heart (Sophie Quirk, University of Kent, UK) -- C…