Staging Stigma / Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History (PDF)

MICHAEL MARK CHEMERS is Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

"This is an eminently readable book...It represents a reservoir of cultural and historical knowledge about one of theatre's often unacknowledged margins, and of the stories of performers who had intriguing and self-directed lives." - Journal of Literary & Cultural Disability Studies

"As a wide-ranging historian and dramaturg in a hands-on conservatory of theatre arts, Chemers knows that freakishness illuminates the conditions underlying all successful performance, because peculiarity, however stigmatized, can bestow eminence when effectively marketed. From the marriage of Tom Thumb to the firing of Frog Boy, Staging Stigma uncovers a history that will interest students of performance studies, disability studies, and American studies." - Joseph Roach, Sterling Professor of Theater, Yale University

"Staging Stigma is a spirited exploration of how the freak show - that extravagant, strange, fascinating, and faded, but lingering, very American institution - turned unusual folks into compelling and repelling celebrities. Chemers perfectly captures the way the freak show stage converts social stigma into theater, detailing both the ascendancy and the decline of these exuberant displays as the extravagant freaks came to be understood as people with medical problems. Chemers unique contribution is the intriguing idea of rethinking these stigmatized ways of being as freaktopia, an appreciation of the proliferation of human differences now pronounced as pathological and undesirable." - Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Professor of Women's Studies, Emory University, author of Extraordinary Bodies, and editor of Freakery

"This study contributes an overview of benchmark moments in freak history and these moments serve as representative of a more holistic discussion of the potential for subversion in the freak show. Its readability, energy, and engaging tone makes it an accessible and historically useful text for undergraduates; the fact that its organizing