Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-05T16:18:51.322Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

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
Get access

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Select Bibliography

Budd, M., and Kirsch, M. H.. Rethinking Disney: Private Control, Public Dimensions. Wesleyan Press, 2005.Google Scholar
Kokai, J. A., and Robson, T. (eds.). Performance and the Disney Theme Park Experience: The Tourist as Actor. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.Google Scholar
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

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×