Presents some of the most important, informative and lively writing available on popular theatre. The book introduces popular theatre forms such as cabaret, circus, puppetry, vaudeville, Indian jatra, political satire, and physical comedy.

Elizabethan Popular Theatre surveys the Golden Age of English popular theatre: the 1590s, the age of Marlowe and the young Shakespeare. The book describes the staging practices, performance conditions and acting techniques of the period, focusing on five popular dramas: The Spanish Tragedy, Mucedorus, Edward II, Doctor Faustus and Titus Andronicus, as well as providing a comprehensive history of a variety of contemporary playhouse stages, performances, and players.

Annotation The first comparative study on the history and practice of popular theatre in Britain, Canada and overseas, incorporating the individual contributions of current, active dramatists into the broader investigation.

" . . . a ground-breaking contribution to the field of African literature . . . " --Research in African Literatures "Anyone with the slightest interest in West African cultures, performance or theatre should immediately rush out and buy this book." --Leeds African Studies Bulletin "A seminal contribution to the fields of performance studies, cultural studies, and popular culture. " --Margaret Drewal "A fine book. The play texts are treasures." --Richard Bauman African popular culture is an arena where the tensions and transformations of colonial and post-colonial society are played out, offering us a glimpse of the view from below in Africa. This book offers a comparative overview of the history, social context, and style of three major West African popular theatre genres: the concert party of Ghana, the concert party of Togo, and the traveling popular theatre of western Nigeria.

In The Popular Theatre Movement in Russia, Gary Thurston illuminates the "popular theater" of pre-revolutionary Russia, which existed alongside the performing arts for the nation's economic elite. He shows how from Peter the Great's creation of Europe's first theater for popular enlightenment to Lenin's decree nationalizing all Soviet theaters, Russian rulers aggressively exploited this enduring art form for ideological ends rather than for its commercial potential. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, educated Russians began to present plays as part of a crusade to "civilize" the peasants. Relying on archival and published material virtually unknown outside Russia, this study looks at how playwrights criticized Russian social and political realities, how various groups perceived their plays, and how the plays motivated viewers to change themselves or change their circumstances. The picture that emerges is of a potent civic art influential in a way that eluded and challenged authoritarian control.

This 1998 book is a study of theatrical sources for many of Dickens' characters and plots.

This is the only book to provide an account of how popular theatre developed from the fairground booths of the eighteenth century to become a vehicle of mass entertainment in the following century. Whereas other studies offer a traditional approach to the theatres of high culture, John McCormick takes the role of impartial historian, uncovering the popular theatres of the boulevards, suburbs and fairgrounds. He focuses on the social and economic context in which vaudevilles, pantomimes and melodramas were performed, and explores the audiences who enjoyed them.

This is the first book to reconstruct early popular musical theatre as a transnational and highly cosmopolitan entertainment industry.