Vaudeville (1881-1920)

Pre-Vaudeville

Before the America civil war, Theatre in America was dominated by burlesque. Theatre was not just a place to go it was a place for men to drink so it was mainly aimed at males.

In 1881 a man named Tony Pastor decided that theatre shouldn’t be just for men, so he decided to put in a verity of performances like, stand up or circus shows. He then removed the rude and risqué content so that more than the rich and men were interested in Theatre, drinking alcohol was also forbidden in Theatres.

What he found out

He found out he could made a large amount of money by putting on cleaner performances for families to watch, as years past a bigger variety of performances came like mines and riverboats

Risqué Theatre was still around but was no longer the focus

The purpose of Vaudeville was to only entertain the audiences, between 1880-1920 they realised the most effective way to do this was using comedy sketches (mainly slapstick).

The demise

As years went on Vaudeville became more popular to many audiences attracting more performers but comedy sketches became more racist were the people performing would be very racist to them creating stereotypes. Silent movies were also at an all-time high and being concededly cheaper than theatres which caused vaudeville to lose a large amount of their audiences. A lot of Vaudeville theatres were shut down due to a loss of money.

New Vaudeville

Vaudeville has now been reborn as performances like Britain’s got Talent and the Royal Variety performances.  39 steps is a comedy spoof of Vaudeville performances.

What makes it New Vaudeville?

·         Overtop Physicality

·         Comedy sketch type performances

·         No character relationship with the audience

·         Often recognise your audience. Acknowledging that they are there.

Our performance:

We were given a scene from “The 39 steps” where Hannay runs into a Milkman outside after discovering a dead woman in his flat. I was partnered with Toby to perform this scene with. We both read the scene a couple of times then casted me as Hannay and Toby as Milkman. We played around with the scenes opening as it starts with Hannay colliding with the Milkman so we first opened with Hannay opening a door that hits the Milkman in the face. We then changed this to have Hannay to run straight into the Milkman and knock them both flying. We first practiced saying the lines and the voice we would use for our characters like Hannay was a posh well-spoken man and the Milkman was a cockney and older man. When we worked on this again we improved our spacing on stage to use our space as we were very close to the back when we first staged it. When we were restaging the scene Hannay would take a step forward when he started talking about the two men on the other side of the road. The Milkman would take a step forward to match Hannay when he spoke as well. For our ending when Hannay tricks the Milkman into giving him his Cap and Coat we have an overlong and exaggerated laugh at the story Hannay had told him. At the end Hannay starts to walk away then runs away as the Milkman looks at the 2 pounds he had just been given and we have a slow realisation in his face as it goes from really happy to be sinking into a really angry face as he then chases after Hannay.