Vaudeville
The final show announcement for this week is all about Vaudeville, our fourth and final show in the Ennotville Summer season.
Vaudeville isn’t an original show but rather an anthology of all the best and brightest from the Golden Age of popular entertainment in North America.
Before television, before radio, but after the whole continent was made easily accessible by railway, there was vaudeville. It was popular entertainment, of course, and no attempt was ever made to pass it off as high art (though the touring “star system” that formed the high art of the day was itself of highly questionable aesthetic value). Shows were a medley of singing, dancing, stand-up, sketches and novelty acts, all intended to make the audience laugh. There was plenty of room for individual talents to shine, and since the focus was purely on making a profit shows were thrust onto the stage with little or no rehearsal time, and the performers had to generate a fair amount of their performance on the spur of the moment.
Despite the challenges, Vaudeville thrived until it was driven out of the theatres by cinema, though for a time both genres could be found in a single evening’s entertainment, a rare marrying of film and live action that has only tentatively been explored by contemporary producers.
Our show will attempt to recapture some of the magic of the Vaudeville era. We’ll have some old-fashioned songs and dances, as well as a generous dose of the comedy that formed the backbone of this art form. If we can we’ll even through in a magic trick or two, or some other “one-trick pony” from the era.
Tickets? You know what do to (I’ve been writing the info down all week! - check my previous posts!).
Vaudeville isn’t an original show but rather an anthology of all the best and brightest from the Golden Age of popular entertainment in North America.
Before television, before radio, but after the whole continent was made easily accessible by railway, there was vaudeville. It was popular entertainment, of course, and no attempt was ever made to pass it off as high art (though the touring “star system” that formed the high art of the day was itself of highly questionable aesthetic value). Shows were a medley of singing, dancing, stand-up, sketches and novelty acts, all intended to make the audience laugh. There was plenty of room for individual talents to shine, and since the focus was purely on making a profit shows were thrust onto the stage with little or no rehearsal time, and the performers had to generate a fair amount of their performance on the spur of the moment.
Despite the challenges, Vaudeville thrived until it was driven out of the theatres by cinema, though for a time both genres could be found in a single evening’s entertainment, a rare marrying of film and live action that has only tentatively been explored by contemporary producers.
Our show will attempt to recapture some of the magic of the Vaudeville era. We’ll have some old-fashioned songs and dances, as well as a generous dose of the comedy that formed the backbone of this art form. If we can we’ll even through in a magic trick or two, or some other “one-trick pony” from the era.
Tickets? You know what do to (I’ve been writing the info down all week! - check my previous posts!).
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