The Routledge Pantomime Reader

The Routledge Pantomime Reader is the first anthology to document this entertainment genre—one of the most distinctive and ubiquitous in nineteenth-century Britain. Across ten different shows, readers witness pantomime’s development from a highly improvisational venue for clowning, dance, and musical parody to a complex amalgamation of physical and topical comedy, stage wizardry, scenic spectacle, satire, and magical mayhem. Combining well-known tales such as "Cinderella", "Aladdin", and "Jack and the Beanstalk" with the lesser-known plotlines of "Peter Wilkins" and "The Prince of Happy Land", the book demonstrates not only how popular narratives were adapted to the current moment, but also how this blend of high and low entertainment addressed a whole range of social and cultural anxieties. Along with carefully annotated scripts, readers will find detailed introductions to all of the collected pantomimes and supplementary materials such as reviews, reminiscences, and a host of visual materials that bring these neglected entertainments to life. The plays collected here provide a remarkable perspective on the history of sexuality, class, and race during a period of vast imperial expansion and important social upheaval in Britain itself—essential reading for students and scholars of theatre history and popular performance.

This broad-based collection of essays is an introduction both to the concerns of contemporary folklore scholarship and to the variety of forms that folk performance has taken throughout English history. Combining case studies of specific folk practices with discussion of the various different lenses through which they have been viewed since becoming the subject of concerted study in Victorian times, this book builds on the latest work in an ever-growing body of contemporary folklore scholarship. Many of the contributing scholars are also practicing performers and bring experience and understanding of performance to their analyses and critiques. Chapters range across the spectrum of folk song, music, drama and dance, but maintain a focus on the key defining characteristics of folk performance – custom and tradition – in a full range of performances, from carol singing and sword dancing to playground rhymes and mummers' plays. As well as being an essential reference for folklorists and scholars of traditional performance and local history, this is a valuable resource for readers in all disciplines of dance, drama, song and music whose work coincides with English folk traditions.

Volume two explores the way a wide range of classic princess tales written by marginalized writers. Rapunzel and Snow White, with their pale skin or long ropes of golden hair, are particularly popular vehicles for exploring and challenging racialized constructions of beauty. Marriage is the traditional vehicle of a happy ending in Princess tales, so marginalized responses to these tales also inherently respond to the doubly colonized position of women in the Anglophone world. The institution of marriage typically exposes the institutional oppression of colonized women. Authors include Charles Chesnutt, Jessie Fauset, Julia Kavanaugh, George Edwards, some of the unpublished manuscripts of Jewish-Australian author Joseph Jacobs, and the earliest work of Sinèad de Valera, as well as fin-de-siècle illustrators such as Harry Clarke, and collected oral tales.

Explores the politics of theatrical and social performance in the establishment of eighteenth-century British imperial rule.

The Routledge Circus Studies Reader offers an absorbing critical introduction to this diverse and emerging field. It brings together the work of over 30 scholars in this discipline, including Janet Davis, Helen Stoddart and Peta Tait, to highlight and address the field’s key historical, critical and theoretical issues. It is organised into three accessible sections, Perspectives, Precedents and Presents, which approach historical aspects, current issues, and the future of circus performance. The chapters, grouped together into 13 theme-based sub-sections, provide a clear entry point into the field and emphasise the diversity of approaches available to students and scholars of circus studies. Classic accounts of performance, including pieces by Philippe Petit and Friedrich Nietzsche, are included alongside more recent scholarship in the field. Edited by two scholars whose work is strongly connected to the dynamic world of performance, The Routledge Circus Studies Reader is an essential teaching and study resource for the emerging discipline of circus studies. It also provides a stimulating introduction to the field for lovers of circus.

This is the first ever reader in political theatre Regards courses for which this will be a core text Tried and tested formula (see The Routledge Reader in Performance below) Marketing Executivearea: this book reinforces our reputation Routledge l the classic texts and star names

Once upon a time: the forgotten female fabulists whose heroines flipped the fairy tale script. People often associate fairy tales with Disney films and with the male authors from whom Disney often drew inspiration—notably Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen. In these portrayals, the princess is a passive, compliant figure. By contrast, The Lost Princess shows that classic fairy tales such as “Cinderella,” “Rapunzel,” and “Beauty and the Beast” have a much richer, more complex history than Disney’s saccharine depictions. Anne E. Duggan recovers the voices of women writers such as Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier, and Charlotte-Rose de La Force, who penned popular tales about ogre-killing, pregnant, cross-dressing, dynamic heroines who saved the day. This new history will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about the lost, plucky heroines of historic fairy tales.

A new issue of the longstanding theatre journal, documenting conversations that traverse disciplinary boundaries The essays in the thirty-first volume of Theatre Symposium traverse disciplinary boundaries to explore what constitutes the "popular" in theater and performance in an increasingly frenetic and mediated landscape. Amid the current resurgence of populist discourse and the enduring impact of popular culture, this volume explores what is considered popular, how that determination gets made, and who makes it. The answers to these questions shape the structures and systems of performance in an interaction that is reciprocal, intricate, and multifaceted. Productions often succeed or fail based on their ability to align with what is popular--sometimes productively, sometimes clumsily, sometimes brazenly, and sometimes tragically. In our current moment, what constitutes the popular profoundly affects the real world politically, economically, and socially. Controversies about the electoral college system hinge on the primacy of the "popular" vote. Streaming services daily update lists of their most popular content and base future decisions on opaque measures of popularity. Social media platforms broadcast popular content across the globe, triggering new products, social activism, and political revolutions. The contributors to this volume engage with a range of contemporary and historical examples and argue with clarity and acuity the interplay of performance and the popular. Theatre and performance deeply engage with the popular at every level--from audience response to box office revenue. The variety of methodologies and sites of inquiry showcased in this volume demonstrates the breadth and depth of the popular and the importance of such work to understanding our present moment onstage and off. CONTRIBUTORS Mysia Anderson / Chase Bringardner / Elizabeth M. Cizmar / Chelsea Curto / Janet M. Davis / Tom Fish / Kyla Kazuschyk / Sarah McCarroll / Eleanor Owicki / Sunny Stalter-Pace / Chelsea Taylor / Chris Woodworth