This book explores the comedy and legacy of women working as performers on the music-hall stage from 1880-1920, and examines the significance of their previously overlooked contributions to British comic traditions. Focusing on the under-researched female 'serio-comic', the study includes six micro-histories detailing the acts of Ada Lundberg, Bessie Bellwood, Maidie Scott, Vesta Victoria, Marie Lloyd and Nellie Wallace. Uniquely for women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, these pioneering performers had public voices. The extent to which their comedy challenged Victorian and Edwardian perceptions of women is revealed through explorations of how they connected with popular audiences while also avoiding censorship. Their use of techniques such as comic irony and stereotyping, self-deprecation, and comic innuendo are considered alongside the work of contemporary stand-up comedians and performance artists including Bridget Christie, Bryony Kimmings, Sara Pascoe, Shazia Mirza and Sarah Silverman.

Autorentext

Sam Beale teaches solo performance and stand-up comedy on the Theatre Arts programmes at Middlesex University, London. She researches into and writes about comic performance, gender and performance and the history of comedy and popular performance.

Inhalt
Introduction: 'reweaving' women's comic performance history.- Chapter 1: 'Sentiments unwomanly and unnatural': moral ambiguity, censorship and public perceptions of the serio-comic performer.- Chapter 2: 'A Comfort and Blessing To Man': performed irony, self-deprecation and comic subversions of gender stereotypes.- Chapter 3: 'Can We Talk?': intimacy, 'gagging' and comic licence in performer-audience relationships.- Chapter 4 'I mustn't tell you what I mean' knowing, not knowing and comic innuendo as performed (self) censorship.- Chapter 5 'Every Little Movement Has A Meaning of Its Own'*: comic gestus and the ironic embodiment of gender.- *Conclusion.