Staging Stigma: A Critical Examination of the American Freak Show (review)

Staging Stigma is the first book-length study of the freak show as a theatrical form. Despite the popularity of freak shows in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, historians of theatre have declined to consider them as a mode of dramatic art. So, too, scholars of disability studies have often denounced the freak show's capacity for abuse and exploitation, while under-emphasizing its theatrical dimensions. By drawing on life histories and, when available, the voices of the performers themselves, Chemers seeks to insert freak shows into the history of theatre in America. He claims that theatre studies provides an ideal vantage point for understanding the staging of stigma that takes place at the freak show because it is a field attuned to the performative dimensions of identity. As his title suggests, the concept of stigma figures centrally in Chemers's account. Building on the foundational work of Erving Goffman, Chemers argues that the freak show makes the production of stigma visible as it constructs the participants' identities through performance, gesture, and costuming. Exposing the theatricality of stigma, he hopes to reveal the mechanisms by which it can be manipulated to serve the interests of stigmatized groups.

Each of the four central chapters in Chemers's study pivots around an event or figure that opens up a discussion of how the freak show engaged with the pressing cultural and political debates of its time. The first chapter is about how freak shows managed allegations of indecency. It focuses on the actor Charles Stratton, best known by his stage name Tom Thumb. Chemers discusses how Stratton's skilful acting, exceptional physical beauty, and intelligence enabled him to become one of the most celebrated performers of his time. The fact that his career included appearances at Barnum's museum as well as at what would today be considered more legitimate theatre attests to the slippage between dramatic modes. It is theatre historians' own preconceptions about what constitutes legitimate dramatic art, Chemers argues, that has led them to overlook an actor of Stratton's talents and popularity. A second chapter describes how popular "missing link" exhibits negotiated between older conceptions of monstrosity, such as those articulated by the influential Ambrose Pare, and the emergence of Darwinian evolutionary theory. The embodiment of the freak show's affirmation of "peculiarity as eminence," the missing link helped to popularize Darwinian evolution and legitimate the project of American imperialism.

A third chapter centres on the Revolt of the Freaks, a protest staged by some of Barnum's most famous performers in 1898. Threatening to strike, the performers banded together to protest being labelled with the "opprobrious" term "freak" (98). After receiving over one hundred letters of support, they finally returned to work under a new name, "prodigies." Chemers situates these struggles as the outgrowth of cultural shifts caused by the medicalization of disability, which threatened to render the concept of "peculiarity as eminence" obsolete. At the same time, he acknowledges the freaks' remarkable accomplishment: it would not be until the formation of Actors Equity that a group of American performers would again so successfully challenge their working conditions. The final chapter looks at contemporary freak shows as a radical form of avant-garde theatre, concentrating on the performance art of Jennifer Miller, Otis Jordan, and Tony Torres. Contrary to those who claim that the freak show waned because of changing attitudes towards disability, Chemers argues that its decline was due to its being expensive in comparison with the mechanized rides that became increasingly popular at carnivals and boardwalks. Although it became less common, the freak show persisted as a radical theatrical medium. Like their counterparts from the past, the living performers Chemers discusses have been able to use their unusual bodies to make a profit and carve out a social role.

Each of the chapters in Chemers's study tells a good story. However, Staging Stigma also seeks to demonstrate why the freak show matters...