Oudat

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a type of variety entertainment started in United States near the beginning of 1880s and lasted until the early 1930s. Created by Tony Pastor, a circus ringmaster, Vaudeville was just variety shows and acts that would run and flow along the transition right into the next show and act, or sometimes, the actor from the preceding act will introduce the next act before the previous act finishes. Therefore, the actor may have a whole variety of different acts in addition to the strippers. Sometimes though, the first act might end up without introduction and the next act will start soon after.

Vaudeville was the best entertainment around the beginning of the 20th century in the United States because televisions were not there yet. By the mid a 1950’S, TVs came along and when they came, a lot of the early actors and entertainers on TV came from Vaudeville while some others went to musical theatre.

Vaudeville evolved from many sources, including minstrel shows, circuses, medicine shows, and burlesque theater shows, which had bawdier humor and usually included striptease. Vaudeville was started by wealthy and big business people to attract wide range of audience for profit. The vaudeville entertainers were usually a traveling company, hired by these wealthy business owners all across the US to perform at theaters. In addition, each theater possessed its own house group or band, but the actors carried their own scenery, makeup, and costumes wherever they went.

According to The World of Theatre by Mira Filner, Vaudeville used to keep their audiences in the theatre by offering them something for everyone such as musical numbers, acrobatic bits, comedy duos, and animal tricks. These clowns, acrobats, and jugglers are differentiated from their precursors who played for pure entertainment value because their physical humor and movement are part of a dramatic text with other massages and goals.

By the 1930’S Vaudeville started to decline due to the introduction of the radio and talking pictures in cinema presentation which let small time theaters offer big time performers on screen for lower price than doing it in person.