The Impure Performance Frame of the Public House Entertainer

Abstract

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.

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