From the 1870s to the 1960s, circuses crisscrossed the nation providing entertainment. A unique workforce of human and animal laborers from around the world put on the show. They also formed the backbone of a tented entertainment industry that raised new questions about what constituted work and who counted as a worker.
Andrea Ringer examines the industry-wide circus world--the collection of shows that traveled by rail, wagon, steamboat, and car--and the traditional and nontraditional laborers who created it. Performers and their onstage labor played an integral part in the popularity of the circus. But behind the scenes, other laborers performed the endless menial tasks that kept the show on the road. Circus operators regulated employee behavior both inside and outside the tent even as the employees themselves blurred the line between leisure and labor until, in all parts of the show, the workers could not escape their work.
Illuminating and vivid, Circus World delves into the gender, class, and even species concerns within an extinct way of life.
| ISBN: | 9780252087967 |
| Publication date: | 7th October 2024 |
| Author: | Andrea Ringer |
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 272 pages |
| Series: | The Working Class in American History |
| Genres: |
Other performing arts Industrial relations, occupational health and safety General and world history |