- Title
- A circus and its context: the FitzGerald Brothers' Circus in Australia and New Zealand, 1888-1906
- Creator
- Arrighi, Gillian Anne
- Relation
- University of Newcastle Research Higher Degree Thesis
- Resource Type
- thesis
- Date
- 2007
- Description
- Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
- Description
- Throughout the 1890s and early years of the twentieth century, the FitzGerald Brothers' Circus was the largest and most popular homegrown circus touring in Australasia. Their productions were at once fabulous and educational, parochial and cosmopolitan, political and sensual. The company's principals, Dan and Tom FitzGerald were astute showmen, sensitive to the shifting tastes of their public, and people of all ages and stations found something in their shows that appealed. Drawing on a diverse range of primary source material, this thesis examines the ways that a range of shows produced by the FitzGeralds articulated a variety of narratives, not all of which were congruent, concerning nation, identity, allegiance, and belonging, in Australasia at the turn of the twentieth century. As a history of a performance company, it traces the artisitic career of the circus from their emergence in 1888 to the company's dispersal in 1906. It brings forward and analyses many of the acts which the FitzGeralds promoted as their key attractions and in which they invested much of their identity. While the story of the FitzGeralds' Circus constitutes the primary narrative line of the thesis, a meta-narrative about events in the wider community, shifting political imperatives, and cultural change, also runs through the thesis as a strategy for annotating the circus shows and drawing out possible readings of them. This study investigates the dialogic relationship that developed between one particular circus and the contemporary society; it interrogates the extent to which that society, directly and indirectly, impacted on the cultural productions of the principal circus of the era and considers the meaning that were reflected back to the circus's public.
- Subject
- performing arts; entertainers; circus performers; theatre history; community; circus; circus history; FitzGerald Brothers' Circus; Australia; national identity
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1312413
- Identifier
- uon:22381
- Rights
- Copyright 2007 Gillian Anne Arrighi
- Language
- eng
- Hits: 2855
- Visitors: 3786
- Downloads: 0