Reviewed by:

• Pageant By Joan FitzPatrick Dean
• David J. Eshelman

Pageants are large-scale scripted events designed to appeal to, include, and build communities. Joan FitzPatrick Dean’s book serves as an introduction to the pageant form, with three detailed analyses of pageants in history. This historical study focuses on British and US examples. Dean’s exploration spans centuries, with key examples including the Noah pageants of the Middle Ages, A Pageant of Great Women and other suffrage pageants of the early 1900s, and the Isles of Wonder that opened the 2012 Olympic Games in London. In each case, she provides abundant description and situates performances within the larger context of pageant history and theory, studying language, structure, and production elements. This book is important because it brings attention to a theatrical form that [End Page 250] has been largely ignored by critics since the early twentieth century. Pageant is a welcome addition to the sparse number of recent studies such as David Glassberg’s American Historical Pageantry (1990) and Dean’s own All Dressed Up: Modern Irish Historical Pageantry (2014). Dean’s published work makes her the expert in the field. Pageant differs from her previous publication in that it discusses the form more broadly, but this broadness goes perhaps too far. While she makes apt use of the categories of “hegemonic” and “counterhegemonic,” I would have preferred a stronger argumentative thrust. However, I am intensely grateful for her work.

Among Pageant’s strengths is the introduction, which details the form. Dean lays out features that separate the pageant from traditional stage plays: qualities such as “short shelf life” and the tendency to be “performed outside purpose-built theaters” (2); “straightforward” plotting, presentational style, and its emphasis on amateur performance (4); and a dependence on singing (7). These traits are tantalizing and point to innovative ways of doing performance. Dean’s representative performances cover key historical points typically cited in pageant studies—the medieval period and the turn of the twentieth century—along with the more recent Olympics example. Medieval pageants, or Corpus Christi plays, were religious dramas commonly performed at festivals by working-class laymen. The turn of the twentieth century is significant because it marked a spike in popularity of the pageant. Dean begins her analysis of this period with a discussion of British dramatist Louis Napoleon Parker and US playwright Percy MacKaye. Both were established “pageant-masters,” meaning that they toured their respective countries helping communities put shows together. Both emphasized and glorified the past, commemorating events that political leaders found important to the myths of the founding and development of their respective nations. In this way, Parker and MacKaye created hegemonic performances that bolstered current political leadership. Dean quotes MacKaye, who advocated pageants to build national identity “to create an appropriate national ritual of American Citizenship” (24).

The hegemonic/counterhegemonic thread appears at intervals throughout the book. For example, in her discussion of medieval Noah plays, Dean foregrounds the figure of Noah’s wife, written as a comic character. She points both to the counterhegemonic uses of this figure—as a clown in an otherwise serious religious story—and to more recent understandings of her as a hegemonic reinforcement of prevailing gender stereotypes (57). Dean later highlights counterhegemony in her discussion of the women’s suffrage pageants of the early twentieth century aimed at societal change—specifically gaining women the right to vote. A key contributor to this movement was British activist Cicely Mary Hamilton (1872-1952), who championed the “New Woman” (77). In contrast to Parker’s and MacKaye’s pageants, which reinforce cultural norms through a rosy look at history, the suffrage performances used pageant conventions to empower women. Specifically, they used tableaux vivants, including scenes of famous women from history, with community members cast as actors (93).

In the last chapter of Pageant, Dean extends her look at pageantry into the current century by examining the “mega-events” of the Olympic Games opening ceremonies. After an overview of the ceremonies of the 1936 Berlin Games, the 1984 Los Angeles Games, and others, Dean focuses on The Isles of...

 审阅者：

• 
  琼·菲茨帕特里克·迪恩选美
•  大卫·J·埃谢尔曼

选美比赛是大型有脚本的活动，旨在吸引、包容和建立社区。琼·菲茨帕特里克·迪恩（Joan FitzPatrick Dean）的书是对选美形式的介绍，对历史上的选美进行了三项详细分析。这项历史研究重点关注英国和美国的例子。 Dean 的探索跨越了几个世纪，重要的例子包括中世纪的诺亚选美比赛、伟大女性选美比赛和 1900 年代初期的其他选举权选美比赛，以及 2012 年伦敦奥运会开幕式的奇迹岛。在每一个案例中，她都提供了丰富的描述，并将表演置于选美历史和理论的更大背景下，研究语言、结构和制作元素。这本书很重要，因为它引起了人们对自二十世纪初以来一直被评论家忽视的戏剧形式的关注[完第250页]。选美是对最近数量稀少的研究的一个受欢迎的补充，例如大卫·格拉斯伯格的《美国历史选美》（1990）和迪恩自己的《盛装打扮：现代爱尔兰历史选美》（2014）。迪恩发表的作品使她成为该领域的专家。 《选美》与她之前的出版物不同，它更广泛地讨论了这种形式，但这种广泛性可能太过分了。虽然她恰当地使用了“霸权”和“反霸权”的类别，但我更喜欢更有力的论证推力。然而，我非常感谢她的工作。

Pageant 的优势之一是介绍，其中详细介绍了形式。迪恩列出了选美表演与传统舞台剧的区别：诸如“保质期短”和“在专门剧院外演出”的倾向等品质（2）； “直截了当”的情节、表现风格以及对业余表演的重视（4）；以及对唱歌的依赖（7）。这些特征非常诱人，并指向创新的绩效方式。迪恩的代表性表演涵盖了选美研究中通常引用的关键历史点——中世纪时期和二十世纪初——以及最近的奥运会例子。中世纪的盛会，或称科珀斯克里斯蒂戏剧，是工人阶级外行人通常在节日上表演的宗教戏剧。二十世纪之交意义重大，因为它标志着选美大赛的受欢迎程度激增。迪恩首先通过对英国剧作家路易斯·拿破仑·帕克和美国剧作家珀西·麦凯的讨论来分析这一时期。两人都被任命为“选美大师”，这意味着他们巡演各自的国家，帮助社区组织表演。两者都强调并颂扬过去，纪念政治领导人认为对各自国家的建立和发展神话具有重要意义的事件。通过这种方式，帕克和麦凯创造了霸权表演，巩固了当前的政治领导地位。迪恩引用了麦凯的话，麦凯主张通过选美来建立国家认同，“以创造一种适当的美国公民身份的国家仪式”（24）。

霸权/反霸权的线索在整本书中不时出现。例如，在对中世纪诺亚戏剧的讨论中，迪恩将诺亚妻子的形象放在了前面，这是一个喜剧人物。她指出了这个人物的反霸权用途——作为一个严肃的宗教故事中的小丑——以及最近对她的理解，作为对普遍性别刻板印象的霸权强化（57）。迪恩后来在讨论二十世纪初旨在社会变革——特别是让女性获得投票权的女性选举权选美活动时，强调了反霸权。这一运动的主要贡献者是英国活动家西塞莉·玛丽·汉密尔顿（Cicely Mary Hamilton，1872-1952 年），她是“新女性”（77 岁）的拥护者。帕克和麦凯的选美比赛通过乐观地看待历史来强化文化规范，与之相反，选举权表演则利用选美惯例来赋予女性权力。具体来说，他们使用了生动的场景，包括历史上著名女性的场景，并由社区成员担任演员 (93)。

在《选美》的最后一章中，迪恩通过考察奥运会开幕式的“大型活动”，将选美的视野延伸到了本世纪。在概述了 1936 年柏林奥运会、1984 年洛杉矶奥运会等赛事的仪式后，迪恩重点关注了岛屿……