Performance and Professional Wrestling

Broderick Chow is a Lecturer in Theatre at Brunel University London, and an active performance practitioner. Eero Laine is Visiting Assistant Professor of Theatre at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.Claire Warden is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University.

• Introduction: Hamlet Doesn’t Blade: Professional Wrestling, Theatre, and PerformanceAudienceCh1 The dissipation of "heat": changing role(s) of audience in professional wrestling in the U.S.Ch2 Pops and promos: speech and silence in professional wrestlingCh3 Playful engagements: Wrestling with the attendant massesCirculationCh4 Stadium Sized Theatre: WWE and the World of Professional WrestlingCh5 Wrestling’s Not Real, It’s Hyperreal: Professional Wrestling Video GamesLuchaCh6 Don't Leave Us in the Hands of Criminals: The Contested Cultural Politics of Lucha LibreCh7 Wrestling With Burlesque, Burlesquing Lucha LibreGenderCh8 The Impact of Women’s Pro Wrestling Performances on the Transformation of Gender Ch9 "Most women train with mostly men, so why not wrestle them?" The performance and experience of intergender professional wrestling in BritainQueernessCh10 Grappling and Ga(y)zing: Gender, Sexuality and Performance in the WWE debuts of Goldust and MarlenaCh11 ‘King of the ring, and queen of it too’: the exotic masculinity of Adrian StreetCh12 "Gold-dust": Ricki Starr’s Ironic Performances of the Queer Commodity in Popular Entertainment BodiesCh13 Muscle Memory: Re-enacting the fin-de-siècle Strongman in Pro WrestlingCh14 The Hard Sell; The Performance of Pain in Professional WrestlingRaceCh15 "Tell Them It’s What Their Grandfathers Got": Racial Violence in Southern Professional WrestlingCh16 Grappling with the "New Racism:" Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonialism in British Wrestling during the 1970s and 1980sCh17 Some Moments of Flag Desecration in Professional WrestlingEpilogue: The Game of Life