Live entertainment at the seaside

The UK's seaside resorts have had to adapt to a number of cultural, economic and social changes over the past 25 years, including a decline in the number of long‐stay visitors. Live entertainment provision at the seaside has also had to adapt, and this chapter of Cultural Trends explores both the current situation of live entertainment, and likely future trends.

The chapter begins with the background to the subject, describing the trends in tourist activity and cultural behaviour that have affected the seaside. It then gives the recent history of the live entertainment industry, with particular emphasis on the summer variety show. Section three provides an overview of the contemporary data available on the amount and type of live entertainment at today's seaside resorts. Section four concerns the provision and programming of live entertainment, and the capacity at resort venues. It focuses on the major role played by local authorities, and also considers the involvement of the private sector. The chapter concludes with some forecasts of the likely future form and provision of live entertainment at the seaside.     

Scales of Normality: Displays of Extreme Weight and Weight Loss in Blackpool 1920–1940

Developments in scientific and medical understanding of disability, as well as an influx of war-disabled veterans in 1914, led to transforming societal attitudes towards those with physical deformities. Thus, scholars suggest that the beginning of the twentieth century witnessed the sudden decline of freak shows as a popular form of entertainment. Whilst freak shows undeniably became less popular in metropolitan spaces such as London or Manchester, they thrived in seaside resorts; sites dedicated to the pursuit of leisure, pleasure and entertainment. This paper examines exhibitions of freakery at British seaside resorts from 1920 to 1940. Through examining the visual material and written reports associated with the displays of unusual bodies at the margins of British life, it argues that seaside freak shows remained centrally important forms of amusement in the twentieth century. Furthermore, it demonstrates how freak shows were constructed utilising public discourse relating to contemporary concepts of health, wellness and the ‘ideal’ or ‘average’ body. Focusing on Blackpool, the foremost health and pleasure resort of the period, this paper analyses exhibitions of extreme weight, to locate their role in the popular construction of ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ bodily size within contemporary British culture.     

Measuring the value of theatre for Tyneside audiences

What values do theatre and dance hold for audience members? And how do these values differ between subsidised, amateur, and commercial performance? This paper addresses these questions through a survey of over 1800 spectators for theatre and dance in Tyneside in northeastern England, as well as a parallel set of focus groups, in the spring of 2014. These methods, which are designed for comprehensiveness and comparability, are being used across Europe by the Project on European Theatre Systems, a working group of theatre sociologists. Our research showed two sets of values which performances achieved; one was a common measure of performance quality, while the other described the values particular to subsidised work. This allows us to articulate both the general value of the arts and the particular values which subsidy (attempts to) facilitate. This has implications for both understandings of cultural value and for cultural policy, as the distinction between the two groups was not clean. We also found that amateur theatre participated in the same value system, but with an increased emphasis on loyalty and community cohesion. The paper concludes a methodological reflection on the use of quantitative methods in theatre studies.     

Cultural engagement across the life course: Examining age–period–cohort effects

Longitudinal studies of cultural engagement are uncommon. This paper explores whether there are stable latent clusters of cultural engagement over time and whether age–period–cohort (APC) effects explain within-person changes between these clusters across the life course. Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (N?=?25,149), I conduct longitudinal latent class analysis to uncover the latent patterns of cultural consumption across nine activities: cinema, watching live sport, attending the theatre, eating at a restaurant, doing DIY, attending an evening class, meeting with local groups, volunteering, and going to a club/pub. Then, I explore whether APC effects are observable in the data using scatterplot smoothing, lowess regression. Six latent clusters are consistently observed in each wave: None, DIY, Restaurant/Pub, Cinema/Theatre, Volunteer, and All (almost all activities). A large number of respondents have highly stable patterns of cultural engagement but there is also a substantial degree of variation. Transitions between latent clusters over time occur between those that are compositionally similar (in terms of activities). These changes in patterns of cultural engagement are partially explained by age effects, such as time constraints and health. Additionally, there is some evidence of cohort effects among the youngest cohorts moving into the “All” latent cluster, the cluster with the most cultural breadth.     

The ‘Isle of Vice’? Youth,class and the post-war holiday on the Isle of Man

This article broadens our knowledge of post-war holidaymaking (c. 1950–80) by adopting the Isle of Man as a case study. A popular holiday resort from the late nineteenth century, the Isle of Man experienced considerable political turbulence during the 1950s and 1960s about how best to stay competitive as a seaside resort, where authorities employed uniquely stringent methods to contain rowdiness and protect the island’s ‘respectable’ atmosphere. The first two sections examine the leisure habits of the young and working class in a holiday context, integrating this analysis with perceptions of their behaviour gleaned from oral interviews with local residents. The concluding section explores how the presence of holidaymakers on the Isle of Man – uniquely among seaside resorts in the British Isles – informed (and in some cases emboldened) a sense of national identity. Oral history, complemented by the Hansard reports of the Isle of Man parliament and local press coverage, sheds light on the activities of the post-war working class at play, and how the presence of holidaymakers fortified Manx national consciousness.     

Audiences for live theatre in Britain: The present situation and some implications

Live theatre in Britain is performed by a host of companies in purpose‐built theatres as well as ad hoc venues. Theatre performances take place all over the country, in rural settings as well as urban environments, and no one will be more than 30 miles from a performance of some sort at some time in the year. In a typical year, over one third of the adult population attend live theatre, and 6 per cent attend opera or ballet, which tend to be presented in urban centres. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport sets store on the importance of the cultural sector and is encouraging arts organisations to develop new audiences in a host of ways.

This chapter of Cultural Trends reviews the available statistics for theatre attendance, considering raw numbers of attenders, ticket revenue, ticket prices and the types of work which are most popular in London and elsewhere. It identifies the sources of information available, although it asserts that the available data are insufficient to describe the sector fully. While pointing out that regional theatre is clearly targeting the future audiences, with as many as one quarter of its performances being aimed directly at young attenders, the chapter also indicates the extent of reliance, especially in the West End of London, on musicals.

An analysis of ticket prices shows that these have been, and are, rising faster than inflation. Coupled with the fact that, in the regions at least, it remains the older and better‐educated who attend theatre, this does nothing to diminish the concern that theatre may increasingly become the activity of a narrowing band of society, and that it is becoming less and less available to the broad spectrum of the population.     

A state of constant prodding: live music,precarity and regulation

Live music makes a vital contribution to the cultural and creative identities of cities. In turn, the spaces in which such activity takes place contribute strongly the functioning of local music and arts scenes. However, particularly in large Australian cities, there is a tension between economic development, fuelled by an extended property bubble, and the viability of small-to-medium live music venues. This tension is compounded by community attitudes toward arts and culture as well as a range of regulatory measures which govern the spaces in which this activity takes place. This paper examines the challenges inherent with developing and sustaining of live music venues in relation to the regulatory barriers associated with doing so. This paper draws on data from two qualitative examining producer accounts of live music operation in Perth, the capital of Western Australia, and Sydney, the capital of New South Wales. Both studies focused on the regulatory frameworks, and barriers associated with being able to support local, original contemporary music activity and were prompted following the closure of several highly supportive, high profile live music venues in each location. This research came in the wake of the so-called ‘lock out laws’, in the entertainment district of Kings Cross and surrounding suburbs, resulting in significant local and national debate around the impact and effectiveness of such laws. This paper is contextualised within debates relating to the importance of supportive live music venues, the challenges associated with developing, supporting and maintaining such spaces in light of gentrification and urban renewal strategies. As argued, these strategies, which work to enhance the vibrancy of cities – and often position arts and culture activity as being a vital component - often displace and/ or cause tensions for the spaces in which cultural and creative activity takes place during and after such regeneration.     

Military base culture and Okinawan rock ‘n’ roll

The presence of US military bases has had a strong influence on US popular music in postwar Japan and Okinawa. In 1951, mainland Japan gained independence from the US occupation while Okinawa was occupied until the early 1970s and therefore was outside of the Constitution of Japan. Okinawa has been forced to coexist with many US bases, soldiers and civilian personnel. Postwar western popular music entered Japan via the bases and became a part of Okinawan culture. In this essay, tracing the history of Okinawan rock ‘n’ roll since the 1960s, I will discuss how to get into Okinawan society, the cultural function played by the US military bases in Okinawa, and the significance of the role played by the US bases for the globalization of ‘American Culture’. The golden age of the entertainment sector geared toward US soldiers was the 1960s and early 1970s, before the reversion of Okinawa to Japan. After this, a reduction in the number of troops and the increasing exchange rate of the yen dealt a serious blow to the economy of the entertainment sector. As a result, Okinawan rock ‘n’ roll increasingly entered another social cultural context; first commercialization by the record industry in Tokyo, and then as a tourist resource for local community development.     

The social stratification of theatre,dance and cinema attendance

In current sociological literature the relationship between social inequality and patterns of cultural taste and consumption is the subject of a large and complex debate. In this paper the primary aim is to examine, in the light of empirical results from a research project in which the authors are presently engaged, three main, and rival, positions that have been taken up in this debate, here labelled as the ‘homology’, the ‘individualization’ and the ‘omnivore–univore’ arguments. Elsewhere, we have concentrated on musical consumption in England, and find evidence that is broadly supportive of the omnivore–univore argument. Here we ask whether such findings are confirmed in the case of theatre, dance and cinema attendance. A secondary aim of the paper is to bring to the attention of practitioners in the field of cultural policy and administration the need to address the issues that arise through the use of more powerful methods of data analysis than those often applied in the past. We explain how indicators of theatre, dance and cinema attendance derived from the Arts in England survey of 2001 can be subject to analysis so as to reveal two distinctive patterns of attendance and, in turn, two distinctive types of consumer—who can, it turns out, be regarded as omnivores and univores, even if with some qualification. The former have relatively high rates of attendance at all kinds of the events covered, including musicals and pantomimes as well as plays and ballet, while the latter tend to be cinema-goers only, that is, non-consumers of theatre and dance. A range of measures of social inequality are then introduced into the authors' analyses, including separate measures of social class and social status and also of educational level and income, and it is further shown that, again in conformity with the omnivore–univore argument, these two types of consumer are socially stratified. Omnivores are of generally higher social status than univores and also have usually higher levels of education and higher income than do univores (the latter finding marking the main difference with musical consumption, which was unaffected by income once other stratification variables were controlled). In sum, our results for theatre, dance and cinema attendance lend, overall, further support to the omnivore–univore argument as against its rivals, but also indicate that different aspects of social inequality impact on different forms of cultural consumption in varying degrees and probably through largely separate processes.     

The body that can(not) represent us—Tian Chi-Yuan's White Water and modern Taiwanese theatre

ABSTRACT

The denial of Taiwan's status as a nation by international communities has long-served as a catalyst for Taiwanese theatre practitioners’ pursuit of an expressive body that responds to complex national identities. Taking Taiwanese society as the basis for considering the irreducible complexity of postcolonial struggles vis-à-vis the power relations of neoliberal cultural production, in the theoretical framework of this paper, I propose a biopolitical reading of modern Taiwanese theatre. In particular, to reveal the constructedness of the idea of the body, I foreground the embeddedness of theatre in local society and scrutinize the interplay between an imagined body and the theatre through Taiwanese practitioner Tian Chi-Yuan's (1964–1996) White Water (or Baishui, 1993). Using this work as a case study, I focus on his experiment of intercultural bodily gestures through which the fabrication of national identity is both revealed and questioned. I consider Tian's practice of integrating cultural traditions expressive of the dynamics of decolonization with the experiment in reconfiguring the local body—a practice that positions the theatre in Taiwan as an experimental and cathartic site for pursuing an epistemological change in identity formation. Thus, the theatre constitutes a performance of a necessary identity-burdened space between history and memory, struggling to renew itself in distinctive contexts.     

‘Now the Scene Appears Chang’d’: Amabel Countess De Grey,Lifecycles and the Visitor Experience of English Watering Places, 1775–1826

This article examines the visitor experience of England’s watering places during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using the diaries and correspondence of Amabel Countess De Grey, it explores the ways in which the motivations, expectations and activities of elite female visitors changed as they reached different stages in their lifecycle. Discussion focuses on the use of mineral waters as a medical treatment; how patterns of sociability differed between spas and seaside resorts; and how attitudes and habits changed with age.     

Challenges of cultural industry knowledge exchange in live performance audience research

ABSTRACT

With live performance audience research frequently relying on cultural organisations to facilitate access to their audiences, this article addresses the issues involved in evidencing spectators’ responses via discursive methodologies. Recalling a series of empirical projects conducted over the past ten years with a range of theatre practitioners, it examines the conflicts involved in carrying out scholarly studies of audience reception against cultural organisations’ pressures to produce their own ongoing audience evaluations. Examining key concerns about audience research raised by creative practitioners in varying theatrical contexts, from site-specific to building-based work, it addresses the difficulties of understanding live performance reception and aesthetic experience via impact frameworks. It begins by situating these three operations in the context of Knowledge Exchange (KE) between academics within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) and those in the creative industry sector.     

Authors' Biographies

ABSTRACT

This article critically engages with a contemporary play, Aur Kitne Tukde, staged in the Hindi language in various cities and towns in India and Pakistan, about gendered violence during Partition. It unsettles the master narrative of ‘honour’, ‘martyrdom’, ‘choice’ and women's ‘agency’ on Partition. The article also highlights the significance of the play in breaking the silences around Partition in the theatre, which, as compared with other cultural and literary mediums, reaches out to a larger section of people in unique ways. It underlines how the whole production of the play was a process of traversing and sharing the journey and trauma of Partition not only for the actors but also for the audiences. The article also tries to problematize the whole question of violence and its representation.     

Towards a post-critical praxis: Intentional states and recommendations for change in acculturation psychology

I offer a way of conceptualizing and researching acculturation psychology and thereby hope to offer a tentative course to take us beyond the critiques addressed in this issue. First, I propose an alternative characterization of acculturation psychology by addressing what changes in acculturation. This proposal is anchored in [Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press] notion of intentional states (e.g. psychological experiences described by terms like ‘identity,’ ‘anger,’ ‘faithfulness,’ and so on) that illustrates how culture and psychology are deeply interdependent. In the dynamic cultural changes that occur in instances of acculturation, intentional states themselves change. Second, I address why such changes ‘matter’ to people by exploring the embodied experience pertaining to intentional states—thereby extending the notion beyond Bruner's use of it. This extension is made by drawing on the phenomenology of M. Bakhtin who proposes how culture shapes our own personally embodied experience of intentional states. Change in the sociocultural context thereby involves changes on a personal experiential plane and, as such, experientially ‘matters’ to people. Over the course of this proposal, I provide six recommendations for the praxis of acculturation psychology. Because the general praxis in acculturation psychology, as it currently stands, makes it difficult to implement these recommendations, I highlight an example of a research study that follows the recommendations contained herein.     

Cross-country comparisons of cultural statistics: Issues and good practice

Cross-country comparisons are popular in cultural policy. This paper looks at how cultural statistics are used in the making of such comparisons. Analysts have identified a general ‘sloppiness’ in current cultural statistics comparisons. Some of the major problems in both data production and data presentation are documented, and a ‘checklist’ of good practice is provided. The paper aims to provide guidance and ideas for anyone making cross-country comparisons of cultural statistics.     

Looking for other stories: women's writing,Self-Respect movement and the politics of feminist translations

ABSTRACT

The primary purpose of this essay is to survey the recent zombie craze in Northeast Asian films from Japan and South Korea. While the concept of the zombie may have originated in colonial Haiti, with its ghoulish images and supernatural lore, zombies were later imported to North America and reformulated as popular cultural entertainment by Hollywood. They are now flourishing in an East Asian cinematic context preserved in a globalized form. The films under investigation – I Am a Hero and Train to Busan – share similar cultural subtexts despite their incommensurable experiences of global capitalism in Asia and its latest ideological phase, neoliberalism. Both films critique the current neoliberal order and were nurtured by historical traumas experienced by both countries as well as the pandemic spread of viruses, both real and imaginary, that have ravaged the region. Nevertheless, the most prominent issue explored by Japanese and Korean zombie films is the continuity of society and its reproduction: as cultural artifacts of the neoliberal world, these films offer dystopian visions in which exploitation accelerates to such an extent that states cannot protect themselves against the viral and capitalist onslaught.     

Capitalizing the big man: Yao Ming,Asian America,and the China Global1

In summer 2002, Yao Ming, the Chinese basketball player from Shanghai, was drafted by the Houston Rockets as the overall first‐pick. His advent to the NBA quickly brought about a phenomenal impact, both economically and culturally. He was not only voted by the fans to the All‐Star game and replaced Shaquille O'Neal as one of the starting five in the Western Conference team, but also boosted the ticket sales of the Rockets' game to an increasing Asian American spectatorship. Instantly, he is more than the ‘little giant’ from China, but the great ‘yellow hope’ for Asian Pacific Americans — representing the ‘Chinese’ and the Chinese market in the age of globalization. Considering entertainment sports as a distinct place for transnational labour and commodity transactions, this paper takes Yao and his proliferating cultural economic impact as an occasion to analyse and critique the China Global as a national‐capitalist fantasy that is materialized at the expense of ‘stylized’ bodies. Acknowledging, although not endorsing, Julianne Malveaux's crude metaphor of basketball plantation, this paper suggests that Yao articulates a different mode of global capitalism than that represented by Michael Jordan in the 1990s. This mode of global capitalism is not so much about the labour of conquest as epitomized by black athletes, but about the attraction of the market and the availability of labour supply as inscribed in the history of Chinese immigration. The American dream of Yao, ultimately, is the capitalist and nationalist desire for ‘bigness’.     

Cultural Continuities

ABSTRACT

This article studies the Nazis' enthusiastic embrace of theatre in the period before and during the Second World War, and places this in a longer tradition of political power and the theatre in Germany. It argues that Hitler, Goering and Goebbels oversaw a ‘restoration’ of German theatre in the later 1930s, aiming to restore the emotional link between audience, Kultur and nation, for their own political purposes.