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Chapter 10 - Populist Provocations and Commercial Cavalcades

Popular Entertainments and the Rise of Mass Mediated Performance

from Part III - Experimental Theatre and Other Forms of Entertainment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 August 2021

By
Chase Bringardner
Edited by
Julia Listengarten  and
Stephen Di Benedetto
Julia Listengarten
Affiliation:
University of Central Florida
Stephen Di Benedetto
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Summary

This chapter examines how a variety of twentieth-century popular forms – circus, Las Vegas spectacles, the modern pop/rock concert, living history museums, and theme parks – created new languages of performance and expanded the realm, scale, and scope of spectacle by borrowing and reshaping past forms and methodologies. These new languages of popular entertainment performance engage most directly with threads of technology, narrative, authenticity, and audience engagement. These threads in turn come to characterize the popular and influence contemporary traditional theatre practice, both nationally and internationally.

Keywords

audienceauthenticitycircuscommercialismconcertLas Vegasmuseumnarrativepopular entertainmentspectacletechnology
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to American Theatre since 1945 , pp. 252 - 275
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

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Budd, M., and Kirsch, M. H.. Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions. Wesleyan Press, 2005.Google Scholar
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Magelssen, S. Living History Museums: Undoing History through Performance. Scarecrow Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Magelssen, S. Simming: Participatory Performance and the Making of Meaning. University of Michigan Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Magelssen, S., and Justice-Malloy, R. (eds.). Enacting History. University of Alabama Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Schneider, R. The Explicit Body in Performance. Routledge, 1997.Google Scholar
Schneider, R. Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment. Routledge, 2011.Google Scholar
Smoodin, E. (ed.). Disney Discourse: Producing the Magic Kingdom. Routledge, 1994.Google Scholar
Sorkin, M. (ed.). Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. Hill and Wang Press, 1992.Google Scholar

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