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A World of Popular Entertainments A World of Popular Entertainments A World of Popular Entertainments: An Edited Volume of Critical Essays Edited by Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow A World of Popular Entertainments: An Edited Volume of Critical Essays, Edited by Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Gillian Arrighi and Victor Emeljanow and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-3730-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-3730-9 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Images........................................................................................... viii Introduction ............................................................................................... ix Part 1: Marvels and Wonders Chapter One................................................................................................. 3 Aboriginal Dance, Military Drill: Captain MacDonald’s Trained Indians and 19 th -Century Variety Entertainment Jerry Wasserman Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 17 The “Fatima” Illusion: Technology, Show Business and the Modern Female Body Bill Dunstone Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 28 From Medical Marvel to Popular Entertainer: The Story of Captain Costentenus, “The Tattooed Greek Prince” Kirsten Wright Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 40 Double Acts: Human-Robot Performance in Japan’s Bacarobo Theatre Yuji Sone Part 2: Adaptation and Preservation Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 55 Localism and Modern British Pantomime Martina Lipton Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 68 From Theatrical Nostalgia to Modernist Design: Nightclubs as Venues for Live Entertainments in Mid-20 th -Century Australia Jonathan Bollen vi Table of Contents Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 83 “Submitted for Approval of the Colonial Secretary”: Popular Entertainment in the State Archives, 1828-1856 Janette Pelosi Part 3: Leisure and Tourism Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 103 From the Traditional Travelling Circus to the Global Zoo: The Persistence of “Performing” Animal Shows in the 21 st Century Gillian Arrighi Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 118 Do Try This At Home: Dance Manuals, Myopia and Misrecognition Amanda Card Part 4: Sites of the Popular Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 137 Australia’s First Belgian Day (1915): History on Stage and Street Veronica Kelly Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 150 The Contribution of Ellis Pearson and Bheki Mkhwane to South African Street Theatre Bett Pacey Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 163 An Issue of “Place”: Circus WOW, Women of Wollongong’s Community Circus Janys Hayes Part 5: The Highbrow Debate Chapter Thirteen...................................................................................... 179 What Good is a Good Night Out: Imbricating Discourses of Labour, Scale and Radicalism in Contemporary British Popular Theatre John Bennett A World of Popular Entertainments: An Edited Volume of Critical Essays vii Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 192 From Hailstones to Hallelujah : The First Handel Commemoration Rosalind Halton Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 207 Musical Entertainment in Newcastle, NSW, 1875-77 Helen English and Stephen Wye Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 221 George Selth Coppin: Colonial Clown and Gentleman Kath Leahy Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 233 Poor Urban Youth and Popular Theatricals: The Case of Late-19 th -Century Australia Melissa Bellanta Appendix A ............................................................................................. 244 Plays Submitted to the Colonial Secretary, NSW, Australia 1841-1856 Appendix B.............................................................................................. 250 Differences between Demands and Tastes of Bourgeois and Working-class Audiences Appendix C.............................................................................................. 253 Entertainments in Newcastle, NSW, Australia 1875-1877 Contributors............................................................................................. 255 Index........................................................................................................ 264 LIST OF IMAGES 1-1 Colonel Charles Edward Stuart MacDonald 1-2 Satirical cartoon showing Captain MacDonalds’s Zouaves 2-1 “The Living Half of A Woman,” the Fatima Illusion 3-1 Captain Costentenus, the “man marked with tattoos” 5-1 Poster for Jack and the Beanstalk , Lyric Theatre 5-2 Poster for Dick Wittington and His Cat , Lyric Theatre 6-1 Dancers present the 1962 Ford Falcon on the Tivoli stage 6-2 The 1962 Ford Falcon press preview, Sydney 7-1 Poster advertising Professor Rea, Ventriloquist 10-1 Actor Julius Knight as Napoleon 10-2 Belgian Day on the streets of Sydney, 1915 15-1 Christie Family, Victoria Theatre Newcastle, 1876 16-1 George Selth Coppin 16-2 “Billy Barlow” songsheet INTRODUCTION GILLIAN ARRIGHI AND VICTOR EMELJANOW This volume is the direct result of a conference which was hosted by the School of Drama, Fine Art and Music at the University of Newcastle, Australia, in June 2009. As the title of the conference suggested, popular entertainments have a global reach and a transnational significance at odds with the fact that the meaning and definition of both “popular” and “entertainment” remain widely contested. Thus the opportunity for scholarly discussion that might embrace the polymorphous nature of popular entertainments, their performance in various media and their reception, the role of popular entertainments in the promotion of social and personal well-being, popular entertainments in the context of tourism, travel and leisure, or in nation building and national identity, was timely and we believed necessary. This volume brings together some of these deliberations in five thematic sections. Part 1 - Marvels and Wonders Popular entertainments have always been identified with the involvement of showmen and illusionists, often denigrated as charlatans. Yet they have played a vital role in bringing together the competing perspectives of truth and illusion, magic and scientific speculation. The Age of Enlightenment replaced superstition with rationality and in so doing ironically created an opportunity for the display of objects and people that defied categorisation and rational taxonomies. Public response to such displays demonstrated a willingness to suspend disbelief even on the part of those who had initially attended in order to scoff. The increasing use of technology from the 18 th century onwards which, in principle, should have reduced the extraordinary showmanship to the operation of a mechanistic causality did little to erase the sense of wonder. Indeed, as Grete de Francesco provocatively suggests, “A disappointed society sought to recapture in technology the supernatural world it had lost.” 1 An enduring aspect of showmanship has been the demonstration of humans behaving like machines and machines exhibiting human behaviour: x Introduction the fascination with automata from the 18 th century illustrates the latter point. The former can be instanced in the pleasure obtained from watching a disciplined group of individuals behaving with machine-like precision. This principle, of course, underpins the chorus lines of musicals, the demonstrations of synchronised swimming and those of military manoeuvres. This element is addressed by Jerry Wasserman in his discussion of Captain MacDonald’s trained Indians who successfully toured America and England after 1874. Of course, such displays formed an integral part of “ethnological show business” during the 19 th century that conflated demonstrations of the “native condition” with the civilising benefits of training. In many respects attitudes towards the civilisation of the savage had much in common with those which addressed the civilisation of children: both could be fashioned into functioning members of European society through discipline. MacDonald’s Indians wore the costumes of Zouaves, the North African soldiers who formed units of the French army from 1840. Their distinctively flamboyant uniforms were
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