In the days before digital recordkeeping, identities could be fluid, particularly in the arts. These articles explore the stories of the sometimes elusive expatriate performing artists working in early twentieth-century Britain, and the nineteenth-century origins of the forms of entertainment that brought these artists to Britain.

Ten Series

Wata-san: Identifying ‘Sussie Wata’, a Japanese actress active in Great Britain, the USA, and France in the early decades of the Twentieth Century.

Ten: The complicated and much mythologised relationship between turn-of-the-century stage magician Tenkatsu and her mentor Tenichi.

Cuckoos and Nightingales Series

Rivers and the Black Swan: The rise and fall of the Black Swan Trio, African American stars of Late-Nineteenth Century English Music Hall.

Cuckoos and Nightingales: the strange history of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ Shows in Great Britain and the artists, black and white, caught in their orbit.

Messrs. Broom and Carey: The journey of African American blackface minstrelsy in Great Britain from caricature to musical innovation.

Resources: African American blackface minstrelsy family tree.

Frontier Series

On the Frontier: the messy life of John Ojijatekha Brant-Sero, Canadian First Nation activist, actor, and fantasist.

Song of Hiawatha: Three Music Hall artists with North American Indian identities that ranged from the exaggerated to the complicated and outright fabricated.

Banner: Detail from a Yoshio Markino illustration for a souvenir programme for the 1904 production of Darling of the Gods. Author’s own collection.