San Antonio College Library

"Clown Scenes recaptures the classic clown routines that flourished in the intimacy of the one-ring circus. They have been all but lost with the rise of the grand circus in the mid-twentieth century. But Tristan Remy, the eminent French circus historian, has pursued the little band of surviving clowns who worked in the old tradition, carefully recording their scenes." "Like all popular theatre forms, these scenes developed as oral collaborations....

"Baggy Pants Comedy takes readers inside the burlesque houses of Depression-era America to explore the role of comedy in a show remembered mostly for strip-tease. It examines how burlesque comics, straightmen, and talking women approached the craft of comedy, working in a genre that relied not on scripts but on a remembered tradition of comedy bits that circulated orally. The book opens a long-neglected area of American folklore, presenting dozens...