ABSTRACT
Most people’s experience of live performance in the last century and a half has occurred outside conventional theatre buildings. And even those performances which have been housed conventionally, like pantomimes, have been what Victor Turner categorised as ‘liminal’, on the margin. Popular performers tended to travel to their audiences, not vice versa, and their work was associated with their audience’s holiday times and places. Popular performers thus created a particularly intimate relationship with their audiences. This was often based on shared backgrounds, locality or social class. Songs were often adapted to accommodate local landmarks or contemporary concerns, and fit-up companies. Families proliferated in the popular theatres, often forming the nucleus of a troupe, as with Circus Markus which toured Scottish villages in the late twentieth century. Some families became well known – the Lupinos, for example, or George Formby’s family.
