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FOOLS AND HORSES The Victorian Clown

Showing Thursday 25 January to Thursday 25 January 2007
Transport | Access

Performance Times: Thursday 25 January at 2.30pm

We continue our series of talks and productions about the energy and diversity of the nineteenth-century theatre, placing the Grand and Blackpool entertainment in its social and cultural contexts. Having presented The Life and Times of Joseph Grimaldi in 2006, we move forward in the annals of clowning to the Victorian era. Before the Grand Theatre was built, Thomas Sergenson, first manager, built a circus that stood on the site from 1889. What were the performances in this Grand Circus like? 
 
A public lecture by DR ANN FEATHERSTONE
With gags performed by Thomas Lawrence
the Clown to the Horse
From a comedian’s gagbook, 1871
Acted for the first time in 130 years!
by students from University of Manchester Drama Department


Fools and Horses is an afternoon of Victorian comedy, spun from the life and work of two professional clowns. Their manuscripts - James Frowde's account of his young life with the famous Henglers’ circus in the 1850s and Thomas Lawrence’s 1871 gagbook - offer unique access to the grass roots of popular entertainment. Through them, Ann Featherstone will explore the role of the circus clown at the height of equestrian entertainment in Britain, when the comic managed audience attention for the riders and acrobats, parodying their skills in his own tumbling and contortionism, and also offered a running commentary on the times through his own ‘wheezes’ – stand-up comedy sets. Plays in the ring connected the circus to the stage. Both these men were also comic singers, giving a sharp insight into popular music just as it was being transformed by the new institution of music hall.

This lecture coincides with publication of The Victorian Clown which Ann Featherstone co-authored with Jacky Bratton (Cambridge University Press). The talk – and demonstration of Victorian stand-up – will appeal to enthusiasts and students of Variety theatre and heritage – and all those who dream about running away to join the circus!

Dr Ann Featherstone is a Lecturer in the Department of Drama at the University of Manchester and Research Assistant in the Department of Drama and Theatre, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a specialist in nineteenth-century popular entertainment in the provinces: music hall, touring theatres, fit-ups, waxworks, menageries, circuses, fairs, freak shows, and penny and saloon theatres. Interested in alternative approaches to Victorian theatre history, Ann researches what entertained ordinary people and how this was determined by what they could afford, what was available, what was allowed, as well as who was providing it and what it was like ‘to be there’!

Circus Friends Association of Great Britain website

Presented By: The Grand Theatre, National Theatre of Variety by arrangement with Manchester University Drama Department

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