Journal of Contemporary Ethnography

 

Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Register here to gain access to SAGE's 500+ Journals Online

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Mullen, K.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
 Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati  
What's this?
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 14, No. 2, 181-203 (1985)
DOI: 10.1177/089124168501400203

The Impure Performance Frame of the Public House Entertainer

Ken Mullen

Public house entertainers encounter distinctive problems in framing their activities as performance and sustaining that frame in the face of overt and covert threats to its definition of reality. Using participant observation and interview data collected in Aberdeen, Scotland, this article shows how the optional involvement of the audience and the possibilities for reduced levels of focused absorption in the frame have significant implications not only for audience but also for performers. Distinctive problems of staging, centering around the bracketing and maintenance of the ongoing performance, anse and must be handled. Public house entertainment demands and teaches a distinctive set of skills: The pub entertainer must learn how to put on a performance before a most problematic audience-an audience that cannot be counted on to be interested, attentive, or respectful-and how to sustain that performance in the face of a variety of recurrent challenges and threats.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?