What is vaudeville show?
vaudeville, a farce with music. In the United States the term connotes a light entertainment popular from the mid-1890s until the early 1930s that consisted of 10 to 15 individual unrelated acts, featuring magicians, acrobats, comedians, trained animals, jugglers, singers, and dancers.
What is vaudeville known for?
Actors performed plays, magicians put on shows, jugglers juggled, but the real focus of vaudeville was comedy. Great comic acts such as Witt and Berg and Burns and Allen brought in the biggest crowds. Vaudeville’s attraction was more than simply a series of entertaining sketches.
Why is it called vaudeville?
The word vaudeville is derived from an old French term for a satirical song, vaudevire, which is a reference to the Vire valley of France, where the songs originated. In the United States vaudeville acts performed variety shows, using music, comedy, dance, acrobatics, magic, puppets, and even trained animals.
What is a dumb act in vaudeville?
The typical vaudeville show line-up
“Dumb” did not refer to the quality of the act, but rather to the fact that they did not rely on sound, and thus were appropriate to use as opening and closing acts when patrons were noisily entering and leaving. Dumb acts were rarely given prime positions on the bill.
What’s another name for vaudeville?
In this page you can discover 17 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for vaudeville, like: vaud, variety-show, theater, skit, show, entertainment, cabaret, entr-acte, bawdeville, revue and music-hall.
How long was a vaudeville show?
two to four hours
The vaudeville show itself was an organized presentation of various acts that ran for two to four hours. Each act came on at a designated time and was announced on a placard placed at the side of the stage. Spectators could choose to sit through the whole show or take in only those acts or “turns” that interested them.
What killed vaudeville?
So what killed vaudeville? The most truthful answer is that the public’s tastes changed and vaudeville’s managers (and most of its performers) failed to adjust to those changes.
Does vaudeville still exist?
But vaudeville itself is gone. It was a magical era when people around the country could see a potpourri of talent that included some of the biggest names in the business.
What is the root word of vaudeville?
The word vaudeville comes from the French phrase voix de ville, “voice of the city.”
When did vaudeville end?
1930
The standardized film distribution and talking pictures of the 1930s confirmed the end of vaudeville. By 1930, the vast majority of formerly live theatres had been wired for sound, and none of the major studios were producing silent pictures.