Vaudeville
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent.
In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a "vaudevillian".
Vaudeville developed from many sources, also including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business", vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.
See also
- American burlesque
- Blackface
- Borscht Belt
- Cabaret
- Chapeaugraphy
- Chautauqua
- Concert party (entertainment)
- Concert saloon
- For Me and My Gal (film)
- Music hall
- Medicine show
- Minstrel show
- Nightclub act
- Revue
- Tab show
- Tivoli circuit
- Tom show
- Variety show
- Vaudeville Bellydance