Researching Popular Entertainment

List of figures

Acknowledgements

Notes on contributors

1. Introduction: entertainment as method

Kim Baston and Jason Price

I. ARCHIVES

2. Alternative archives in popular entertainment research: the Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files

Maria De Simone

3. Like finding a needle in a haystack: child actors and the archive

Gillian Arrighi

4. Don Juan in Montreal: investigating music in eighteenth-century pantomime

Kim Baston

5. Carry on curating: comedy at the V&A

Simon Sladen

II. TEXTS

6. In search of lost performances: the challenges of reconstructing a nineteenth-century Karagoez play

Nazli M. UEmit

7. Postcards and popular entertainment studies: resources and methods

Penny Farfan

8. Seductive texts: the uses of art as historical evidence

Jason Price

9. Reading meaning in a contested landscape: the challenges of investigating Australian bushranger re-enactments

Janys Hayes

III. BODIES

10. Seeking the ghost Clari: creative practice and virtual reality as a method for the revival of nineteenth-century performances in colonial Australia

Jane Woollard

11. Finding Likay through practice: a research-practitioner's reflection on specialising in the Thai popular form

Sukanya Sompiboon

12. Pierrots on the Prom: re-enactment, revival and in-heritage transfer in seaside performance

Tony Lidington

13. Funny then and now? Re-enacting World War II soldier sketch comedy

Tara Demmy

14. Placing yourself in performance research: a phenomenological approach to investigating stand-up comedy

Yingnan Chu

15. Lip-synching for (some) life: researching queer/camp bodies through practice-based methods

Simon Dodi

Index