Download or read book Circus World written by Andrea Ringer and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 1870s to the 1960s, circuses crisscrossed the nation providing entertainment. A unique workforce of human and animal laborers from around the world put on the show. They also formed the backbone of a tented entertainment industry that raised new questions about what constituted work and who counted as a worker. Andrea Ringer examines the industry-wide circus world--the collection of shows that traveled by rail, wagon, steamboat, and car--and the traditional and nontraditional laborers who created it. Performers and their onstage labor played an integral part in the popularity of the circus. But behind the scenes, other laborers performed the endless menial tasks that kept the show on the road. Circus operators regulated employee behavior both inside and outside the tent even as the employees themselves blurred the line between leisure and labor until, in all parts of the show, the workers could not escape their work. Illuminating and vivid, Circus World delves into the gender, class, and even species concerns within an extinct way of life.

Download or read book Women of the American Circus 1880 1940 written by Katherine H. Adams and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-10-16 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the years 1880 to 1940, the glory days of the American circus, a third to a half of the cast members were women--a large group of very visible American workers whose story needs telling. This book, using sources such as diaries, autobiographies, newspaper accounts, films, posters, and route books, first considers the popular media's presentation of these performers as unnatural and scandalous--as well as romantic and thrilling. Next are the stories told by circus women, which contradict and complicate other versions of their lives. Across America in those years an array of acts featured women, such as tableaux, freak shows, girlie shows, tiger acts, and aerial performances, all involving special skills and all detailed here. The book offers a unique and fascinating view of not just the circus but of what it meant to be an American woman at work.

Download or read book Female Aerialists in the 1920s and Early 1930s written by Kate Holmes and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Female solo aerialists of the 1920s and early 1930s were internationally popular performers in the largest live performance mass entertainment of the period in the UK and USA. Yet these aerialists and this period in circus history have been largely forgotten despite the iconic image of ‘the’ female aerialist still flaring in the popular imagination. Kate Holmes uses insights gained as a practitioner to reconstruct in detail the British and American performances and public personae of key stars such as Lillian Leitzel, Luisita Leers, and the Flying Codonas, revealing what is performed and implicit in today’s practice. Using a wealth of original sources, this book considers the forgotten stars whose legacy of the cultural image of the female aerialist echoes. Locating performers within wider cultural histories of sport, glamour, and gender, this book asks important questions about their stardom, including: Why were female aerialists so alluring when their muscularity challenged conservative ideals of femininity and how did they participate in change? What was it about their movements and the spaces they performed in that activated such strong audience responses? This book is vital reading for students and practitioners of aerial performance, circus, gender, popular performance, and performance studies.

Download or read book The Big Top on the Big Screen written by Teresa Cutler-Broyles and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-01-10 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Circuses and film are a natural pairing, and the new essays making up this volume begin the exploration of how these two forms of entertainment have often worked together to create a spectacle of onscreen alchemy. The films discussed herein are an eclectic group, ranging from early silent comedies to animated, 21st century examples, in which circuses serve as liminal or carnivalesque spaces wherein characters--and by extension audience members--can confront issues as far-reaching as labor relations, sensuality, identity, ethics, and more. The circus as discussed in these essays encompasses the big top, the midway, the sideshow and the freak show; it becomes backdrop, character, catalyst and setting; and it is welcoming, malicious or terrifying. Circus performers are family, friends, foe or all of the above. And film is the medium that brings it all together. This volume starts the conversation about how circuses and film can combine to form productive, exciting spaces where almost anything can happen.

Download or read book The Passing Scene written by Janice Lennon and published by . This book was released on 1974 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Haunted Baraboo written by Shelley Mordini and Gwen Herrewi and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2021-08 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For decades, ghosts have been known to inhabit some of Baraboo's most prized historic locations. Buildings and mansions built by the Ringling brothers at the height of their circus empire now harbor apparitions of unidentified children, horse trainers and other circus workers. Residents throughout the Downtown Baraboo Historic District describe disembodied voices, footsteps and items moving on their own. Even historic homes, new homes and roadways have ghosts--a family awakened to find their dining room table set for a party of ten, a little girl realized that her "friend" wasn't getting any older and a Highway 12 hitchhiker materialized despite the highway being rerouted. Founder of Baraboo Tours Shelley Mordini and tour guide Gwen Herrewig share tales of Baraboo's more mysterious side.

Download or read book Life is a Circus written by Angela Witczak and published by . This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Fall of the Big Top written by David Lewis Hammarstrom and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once an eagerly awaited spectacle, the traveling circus--that miracle of red wagons, trumpeting elephants and spangled trapeze artists that slipped into town at dawn and disappeared by midnight--has all but vanished from the American landscape. This work explores circus history from 1793 to the present and addresses the forces of modern culture (such as the popularity of Cirque du Soleil, and pressure from the animal rights movement) that are pushing big top shows toward what the author calls "circus ballet." Numerous photographs and in-depth interviews conducted with show owners, performers and directors enrich the narrative. Overall, the book reveals a sobering contrast between circuses of yesterday and today, even as it honors the outstanding performers who created, and have sustained, the enduring appeal of the circus.

Download or read book Stage women 1900 50 written by Maggie B. Gale and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book presents a collection of cutting-edge historical and cultural essays in the field of women, theatre and performance. The chapters explore women’s networks of professional practice in the theatre and performance industries between 1900 and 1950, with a focus on women’s sense and experience of professional agency in an industry largely controlled by men. The book is divided into two sections: ‘Female theatre workers in the social and theatrical realm’ looks at the relationship between women’s work – on and off stage – and autobiography, activism, technique, touring, education and the law. ‘Women and popular performance’ focuses on the careers of individual artists, once household names, including Lily Brayton, Ellen Terry, radio star Mabel Constanduros and Oscar-winning film star Margaret Rutherford.

Download or read book P T Barnum written by A. H. Saxon and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I believe hugely in advertising and blowing my own trumpet, beating the gongs, drums, to attract attention to a show, Phineas Taylor Barnum wrote to a publisher in 1860. "I don't believe in 'duping the public,' but I believe in first attracting and then pleasing them." The name P.T. Barnum is virtually synonymous with the fine art of self-advertisement and the apocryphal statement, "There's a sucker born every minute." Nearly a century after his death, Barnum remains one of America's most celebrated figures. In the Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum, A.H. Saxon brings together more than 300 letters written by the self-styled "Prince of Humbugs." Here we see him, opinionated and exuberant, with only the rarest flashes of introspection and self-doubt, haggling with business partners, blustering over politics, and attempting to get such friends as Mark Twain to endorse his latest schemes. Always the king of showmen, Barnum considered himself a museum man first and was forever on the lookout for "curiosities," whether animate or inanimate. His early career included such outright frauds as Joice Heth, the "161-year-old nurse of George Washington," and the Fejee Mermaid-the desiccated head and torso of a monkey sewn to the body of a fish. Although in later years he projected a more solid, respectable image-managing the irreproachable "legitimate" attraction Jenny Lind, becoming a leading light in the temperance crusade, founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus-much of his daily existence continued to be unabashedly devoted to manipulating public opinion so as to acquire for himself and his enterprises what he delightedly termed "notoriety." His famous autobiography, The Life of P.T. Barnum, which he regularly augmented during the last quarter century of his life, was itself a masterpiece of self-promotion. "Will you have the kindness to announce that I am writing my life & that fifty-seven different publishers have applied for the chance of publishing it," he wrote to a newspaper editor, adding, "Such is the fact-and if it wasn't, why still it ain't a bad announcement." The Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum captures the magic of this consummate showman's life, truly his own "greatest show on earth."

Download or read book Uncle John s Facts to Annoy Your Teacher Bathroom Reader For Kids Only written by Bathroom Readers' Institute and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-01 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncle John's fabulous and fascinating For Kids Only reader is back. No parents allowed! We admit it: Uncle John wasn’t a great student. He’d rather draw plungers or make fart noises than read boring school books. So we made this book with little Uncle John in mind. It’s full of fun facts and funny illustrations--all designed to make your teacher squirm. It’s got the weird. It’s got the wacky. And it definitely has the gross. So hide this book from the grownups as you check out . . . * Icky eats: fried spiders and candy-coated larvae * Hunting for real hidden treasures * The history of doughnuts * How to make armpit farts * Goofball students who grew up to be president * Wrong facts your teacher thinks are true Plus dumb crooks, amazing kids, animal oddities, and a whole lot more!

Download or read book Catalog of Copyright Entries written by Library of Congress. Copyright Office and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book American Historical Pageantry written by David Glassberg and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 1990 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What images shape Americans' perceptions of their past? How do particular versions of history become the public history? And how have these views changed over time? David Glassberg explores these important questions by examining the pageantry craze of the

Download or read book The Contemporary Circus written by Ernest Albrecht and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2006-10-10 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fun, energy, and hard work integral to the exciting world of the circus is lovingly captured in The Contemporary Circus: Art of the Spectacular, an in depth look at the creative process of today's circuses. Through numerous personal interviews with directors, designers, composers and performers, author Ernest Albrecht provides a unique inside view of the journey through which the most innovative and exciting modern circuses are produced, from the director and production team to the performers, and from designing the circus to setting it to music. Case studies of specific productions by the Big Apple Circus, Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, and Cirque du Soleil illuminate the artistic give-and-take necessary in such a collaborative process, proving the circus a true art form, one as artistic as theatre or dance. A variety of performers such as animal trainers, dancers, and clowns discuss their approach to their individual specialties, and the text concludes with an examination of the world's circuses and schools and their methods for training circus artists. A full photo spread of 30 beautiful photos will help inspire and enlighten artists and fans alike.

Download or read book Looking Into History written by Dean W. O'Brien and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Circus Age written by Janet M. Davis and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2003-10-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century ago, daily life ground to a halt when the circus rolled into town. Across America, banks closed, schools canceled classes, farmers left their fields, and factories shut down so that everyone could go to the show. In this entertaining and provocative book, Janet Davis links the flowering of the early-twentieth-century American railroad circus to such broader historical developments as the rise of big business, the breakdown of separate spheres for men and women, and the genesis of the United States' overseas empire. In the process, she casts the circus as a powerful force in consolidating the nation's identity as a modern industrial society and world power. Davis explores the multiple "shows" that took place under the big top, from scripted performances to exhibitions of laborers assembling and tearing down tents to impromptu spectacles of audiences brawling, acrobats falling, and animals rampaging. Turning Victorian notions of gender, race, and nationhood topsy-turvy, the circus brought its vision of a rapidly changing world to spectators--rural as well as urban--across the nation. Even today, Davis contends, the influence of the circus continues to resonate in popular representations of gender, race, and the wider world.

Download or read book The Carriage Journal Vol 59 No 5 October 2021 written by Ken Wheeling and published by Carriage Assoc. of America. This book was released on 2021-10-04 with total page 68 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the cover: Laura Kunze driving Bribance to a Demarest Wicker Phaeton in the Novice Horse division at the 2021 Villa Louis Carriage Classic in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. Features: Eagle Eyes: The 2021 Carriage Showcase in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin A Brief Overview of the Exciting 1893 World's Columbian Exposition by Kathleen Haak Our Shared Past: The View From The Box A Backward Glance Do You Know? Memories: - The Great Petersham Coach Caper by Ken Wheeling - Treasures From The Attic with Ann Sanders - The Guinea Hunter's Tip and Its Sad Results by Tom Ryder Carriage & Driving: Getting Started: Bridles by Tom Ryder On the Road: Route de Lorraine 2021 by Stephan Broeckx In the Stable Our Community: The Passing Scene Welcome Letter to the Editor