‘Training the Popular Performer’ Book Launch Event

The Popular and Comic Performance Research Centre (PCP) invite you to a Book Launch Event

Adam Ainsworth (De Montfort University), Olly Double and Sophie Quirk present the launch of the edited volume Popular Performance (Bloomsbury, 2017) and a special issue of the journal Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, entitled ‘Training the Popular Performer’

There is no fourth wall in popular performance. The show is firmly rooted in the here and now, and the performers address the audience directly, while the audience answer back with laughter, applause or heckling. Performer and role are interlaced, so that we are left uncertain about just how the persona we see onstage might relate to the private person who presents it to us.

Popular Performance defines and surveys varieties of performance where the main purpose is to entertain, and where there is no shame in being trivial, frivolous or nonsensical as long as people go home happy at the end of the show. Contributions by new and established scholars focus particularly on how it is made, explaining the techniques of performance and production that make it so appealing to audiences.

Monday 6 November, 6pm, Aphra Theatre, University of Kent

Wine and nibbles will most definitely be served (NB Just emphasizing the ‘free wine’ aspect of this event)

More about the PCP Research Centre

The Popular and Comic Performance (PCP) research centre brings together academics from a range of disciplines (e.g. Drama, Film, Social Anthropology, Philosophy). Our research investigates a real variety of related areas including: stand-up comedy; music hall and variety; 18th century popular theatre; melodrama; Greek Old and Middle comedy; community performance work; puppetry; TV and film production; and punk performance.