Spiritualism as Popular Performance in the 1930s: The Dark Theatre of Helen Duncan

The essay examines the strange, illicit performances of the medium Helen Duncan as a way of re-assessing British popular theatre of the 1930s and 1940s. By providing intimate, emotionally-fulfilling theatre for her audiences, it argues that Duncan continued established popular performative practices whilst at the same time posing radical questions about the limits and meanings of the representation of class and the female body.