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This article asserts that one of the most popular plays of the era, George Alexander Stevens’s Lecture on Heads (1764), was so successful in its use of objects, mimicry, and other deverbalizing techniques that historians have subsequently misinterpreted its satirical purpose. The wooden and papier maché heads Stevens exhibited were anything but generic: they were skillfully crafted representations of recognizable public figures. Targeting these figures with keen precision, Stevens engaged his audiences in a complex “gazing game” that required deep knowledge of 1760s court gossip, political intrigue, mezzotint imagery, and the semiotics of print caricature. This article plays that game through close analysis of caricatures, etchings, engravings, mezzotints, oil paintings, and other visual sources, aided by contemporary accounts of the Lecture , and various (unauthorized) publications of Stevens’s script.

Selected byChoicemagazine as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2009When Broadway Was the Runwayexplores the central and largely unacknowledged role of commercial Broadway theater in the birth of modern American fashion and consumer culture. Long before Hollywood's red carpet spectacles, Broadway theater introduced American women to the latest styles. At the beginning of the twentieth century, theater impresarios captured the imagination of their largely female patrons by transforming the stage into a glorious site of consumer spectacle. Theater historian Marlis Schweitzer examines how these impresarios presented the dresses actresses wore onstage, as well as the jewelry and hairstyles they chose, as commodities that were available for purchase in nearby department stores and salons. The Merry Widow Hat, designed for the hit operetta of the same name, sparked an international craze, and the dancer Irene Castle became a fashion celebrity when she anticipated the flapper look of the 1920s by nearly a decade. Not only were the latest styles onstage, but advertisements appeared throughout theaters, in programs, and on the curtains, while magazines such asVoguevied for the rights to publish theatrical costume sketches andHarper's Bazarenticed readers with photo spreads of actresses in couture. This combination of spectatorship and consumption was a crucial step in the formation of a mass market for consumer goods and the rise of the cult of celebrity. Through historical analysis and dozens of early photographs and illustrations, Schweitzer aims a spotlight at the cultural and economic convergence of the theater and fashion industries in the United States.

Yet there is ample evidence to suggest that girls have always been active consumers of and participants in theatrical entertainment, even when parents, custom, or the law forbade them from attending the theatre or performing onstage.How have theatrical representations of girlhood served to promote/contest dominant ideologies of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, and/or nationality? *.

This essay examines the convergence of phrenology and nineteenth-century British theatre by tracing the \"stage life\" of a life cast made by Scottish phrenologist George Combe from the head of the child actress Clara Fisher. It argues that by first casting Fisher's head, and then widely disseminating his report on that cast through publications and lectures, Combe staked a claim to the young actress, casting her, both literally and figuratively, as a legible child, one whose talent arose directly from her physical traits and who was therefore no mystery or monster, but a fascinating specimen. This aspect of Combe's claim to Fisher became even more apparent when he brought her cast with him onto the lecture stage, where it joined dozens if not hundreds of other phrenological objects in a scientific spectacle designed to prop up Combe's own performance of phrenological mastery. At the same time, however, audience knowledge of Fisher's prodigious abilities, not to mention the liveliness of the cast itself, worked against Combe's narrative of human dominance, calling into question the possibility of ever \"plucking out the heart\" (or the brain) of human mystery, let alone the mysteries of skillful acting. Thus while one reading of Fisher's cast would suggest that the object only became animated when a living human came into contact with it, the essay interprets the cast as an animate object in its own right, one capable of acting on and animating the humans who entered its presence.

In The Great Wet Way, a humorous account of transatlantic travel, American theatre critic Alan Dale represents ocean liners as sites of transformation, frivolity, and performance. In the passage above, he ponders the peculiar metamorphosis that overtakes him whenever he crosses the Atlantic. Cut off from the hustling world of Broadway and Fifth Avenue, he loses his “real self,” becoming instead an autograph-hunting, bridge-playing, opera-glassing “ship self.” It is as though the ship has remade Dale and the social world around him (Fig. 1). Within this altered world, new sights become old sights, and eccentric clothing or mannerisms come to seem commonplace. Dale recalls seeing a young woman wearing a Panama hat covered with autographs from her fellow passengers. If the woman dared to “walk down Broadway or Fifth Avenue wearing that hideous autograph hat,” he writes, “[s]he would probably be followed by a howling and derisive mob. . . . Yet on board she was unmolested. After the first few days nobody noticed the autograph hat.”

The princess makeover is a signature Disney performance that articulates the interplay between the production of a desiring subject and the commodification of experience. It is a transformation that demands affective labor from consumers on behalf of one of the world's preeminent brands.

Canadian artist Brian Jungen has achieved international fame for taking mass-produced goods— plastic chairs, gas cans, basketball sneakers— and transforming them into intricately wrought pieces that resemble First Nations art objects. Displayed in the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Jungen's pieces produced a Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt.

Timeline January 31, 1907 New York Grand Jury indicts all six members of the Syndicate on charges of criminal conspiracy and restraint of trade January 1907 Labor unrest among British variety artists leads to a three-week strike; many of these performers later sign with American vaudeville agents February 1907 Percy Williams and Willie Hammer stein join B. F. Keiths United Booking Office, abandoning William Morris in the process mid-February 1907 Klaw & Erlanger announce plans for advanced vaudeville, supported by William Morris March-April 1907 Klaw & Erlanger, with William Morris's assistance, send agents to Europe to scout for talent April 2, 1907 Alfred E. Aarons leaves for Europe to scout for Klaw & Erlanger April 26, 1907 Klaw & Erlanger join with the Shuberts to form the United States Amusement Company early May 1907 Percy Williams travels to Europe on board the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse May-June 1907 Williams and Aarons chase each other over Europe searching for talent early June 1907 Marc Klaw leaves for Europe, begins preparations for \"World Theatre Trust\" early June 1907 Aarons returns from Europe with contracts for advanced vaudeville June 18, 1907 Judge Otto Rosalsky dismisses January indictment of the Syndicate July 12, 1907 Martin Beck leaves for Europe on board the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse July 17, 1907 Klaw & Erlanger announce their plans for a \"World Theatre Trust\" July 25, 1907 Percy G. Williams, Martin Beck, Meyerfeld, Marinelli Ltd. announce formation of the \"International Booking Syndicate\" mid-October 1907 European performers begin arriving in the United States to begin their vaudeville tours October 17, 1907 Panic overtakes Wall Street November 6, 1907 Klaw & Erlanger and the Shuberts sign an agreement with B. F. Keith and the other members of the UBO to remain out of vaudeville for ten years in exchange for $250,000 December 1, 1907 New York World reports that at least fifty road companies have \"gone to smash\" February 3, 1908 Official end of Advanced Vaudeville