Kim Baston is Adjunct Senior Lecturer at LaTrobe University, Australia. She spent many years working as an actor, director, animateur, and composer in theatre and film, in the UK and in Australia. Her research interests include the use of music in theatre, applied theatre, circus history and culture, and popular entertainments.

Jason Price is a Reader in Theatre and Performance Studies at the School of Media, Arts and Humanities in the University of Sussex, UK. He served as co-convenor of the Popular Entertainments Working Group with the International Federation for Theatre Research from 2018 to 2024.

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 Karagöz play

Nazli M. Ümit

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