Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
While it would be GREAT to start a vaudeville festivval, I'm not sure that 
someone would do WELL to start one-- in fact it's the fastest way I know 
to make a small fortune  (out of a large one!)

The problem is money-- as I said way up there in the beginning-- 
vaudeville is a popular theatre that is not really theatre, and not really 
popular-- people like it, but it's hard to get a lot of people to come out 
and pay folding money for it in this day and age.  Why, I don't know.  I 
could probably make a lot more if I knew the answer.

People will fill a hat on the street, people will buy tickets to Mexican 
mud wrestlers, but a vaudeville show, in a theatre-- it's a hard sell.  
Unless you've got Billy Crystal in it, or somebody famous-- but generic 
vaudeville  I don't know-- you really have to  sell it in the right way-- 
and I don't think that "Vaudeville" is the way to go.  

Just For Laughs Comedy Festival does pretty well in Montreal, but it's 
about comedy first and foremost-- and they are pretty modern when it comes 
down to it.  And they use a load of celebrities.
  

    
How about "endangered theater" or "ancient old-growth comedy"?
  

    
Yeah, but Adam who PRESENTS generic vaudeville shows? Who would go see
something called simply "Vaudeville Show"? Nobody but amateur groups
does that, as far as I know. People buy tickets to go see their
favorite performers. Certainly solo vaudeville artists and acts sell
large number of tickets...and dont shows like Lazer Vaudeville do
extremely well? To fudge a little, the Bindlestiffs, Coney Island,
Circus Amok, Circus Contraption have sold thousands and thousands and
thousands of tickets -- the only reason they all live hand to mouth has
to do with undercapitalization. With the right backing -- proper ad
and marketing budgets, a sophisticated (and aggressive) sales division,
etc. any of them (or any vaudeville show) could be made to pay off, I
am convinced of it. It's not a question of lack of audience or press
interest. It's a question of capital and organization. Big Apple Circus
has grown into a multi-million dollar organization from a handful of
acrobats because early on they got a well-heeled board of directors
involved. With the right amount of backing, you can reach out to your
public. Without it, you are performing the labor of Sisyphus!
  

    
About the one-act plays and such: "The Sunshine Boys" is about a duo
that performed just these sorts of skits in vaudeville, n'est pas? The
play, at least, gives the impression these skits were little more than
extended character-based jokes, maybe 10 minutes or so long each. 
  

    
Oh, yeah! The act presented in "the Sunshine Boys" is very much based
on a team called Smith and Dale. And yeah, they were sketch comedians
who built their sketches on joke after joke after joke. In there case,
there would be a basic set of some time, and they would employ walk-ons
for supernumery roles, such as "the nurse", if it's the "doctor
sketch". But there were also sketches that were far more
realistic...far less what we think of as "vaudevillian". It would be
sort of like having a pocket version of a TV movie of the week about
alcoholism snuck in between dancers and a magician. 
  

    
I don't disagree that many groups (and solo acts) are undercapitalized, 
including myself.  (Or as I often say, when people ask me what I think 
about Cirque du Soleil, "Well, if I had a forty million dollar budget, I'd 
have a great looking set, the best acrobats money could buy, and a whole 
lot of tv ads too!")  But, IMO, it's not just capitalization that is 
stopping those acts you mentioned from becoming the next Cirque du Soleil. 
There's a lot going on with those companies.  And becoming Big Apple or 
Cirque or Puppetry of the Penis or BlueMan Group is not only about 
capitalization.  It's also about savvy marketing, dumb luck, having the 
right show at the right time, and yes, spending lots of money at the same 
time that you have the right show.

What I was saying above  is that if somebody wanted to have a Vaudeville 
Festival, IMO, they should call it something else.

Mike Rosman, who along with the Laughter Arts Foundation would put on 
MotionFest every year. (workshops on  performing for variety and physical 
theatre artists) had to stop putting on the festival.  It wasn't because 
it lost money, but it was just too hard to break even.

It broke even because the physical artists who came to the classes paid 
enough to make it work-- the show at the end of it for the public was 
well attended-- but would never have been able to pay for the performance 
alone.  My point being is that the classes paid for the show, not the show 
for the classes.  And that money came out of a small universe of people 
(performers who travelled from all around the country to study with guys 
like Geoff Hoyle, Bob Berky, Avner the Eccentric, and Dominique Jando.  

Having a vaudeville festival is a great idea-- calling it a vaudeville 
festival is perhaps not such a great idea.  (I wish it were otherwise, and 
of course I may be wrong)

It reminds me a little of the mid-90's, when clowns and act-ers (those
with acts!) started becoming performance artists, because that was the
buzz word.

Okay-- enough rant for now.
  

    
Slipped== Travis, speaking of mini-dramas in the middle of the show, what 
do you know about the Chitlin' Circuit?  There was an article a few years 
ago about gospel rap musical melodramas that play primarily black cities, 
and make great sums of money.   Was there something like that back in the 
day?
  

    
Adam, you're making the same mistake EVERYBODY makes. Vaudeville does
not equal circus arts. If what you're saying is that ticket buyers will
not line up to watch an entire festival of physical artists, with that
I quite agree. But in my book, that's about 10% of vaudeville. The
rest is (or should be, as it once was) stand up comedy, sketch comedy,
singers, dancers, etc. NOT including that in the vaudeville package is
depriving the product of its most commercial element. Vaudeville is
show business, no more, no less. So if somebody had a vaudeville
festival and its all circus clowns and acrobats, they had better have a
million dollar budget to compensate for the fact they have booked
people who appeal chiefly to afficianadoes. Also: in my dealings with
the public and the press, I have found that vaudeville is not a dirty
word, but a magic one. Journalists and radio announcers across the
nation get completely excited about the subject--they are drawn to it
like flies to honey, and so are thousands of book buyers! In the words
of the vaudevillian -- the public is never wrong; to fetch 'em is a
question of salesmanship. 

As for the black circuits--yes, there were several all-black circuits
to compensate for the more limited (and restricted) major circuits,
which didnt admit or hire blacks in the South, and hired blacks in the
North on a sort of grudging, quota basis (at first--though towards the
end, some African Americans were among vaudeville's biggest
stars--Ethel Waters, for example). The black circuits crept up in the
1920s, late in vaudeville's history,  at about the same time blacks
first moved north in large numbers. Nearly any African American act you
can think of from that era performed on these circuits
  

    
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it 
means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'

'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many 
different things.'

'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's 
all.' 

----------------------------
Travis, I'm not sure that we aren't arguing for the same thing.

Although my particular interest is circus/clown stuff, I'd love to see a 
show which features a wide variety including song and dance, 
mini-melodramas, hypnotists, dog-trainers, an electrical display, 
martial arts demonstrations, puppet shows, and just about anything 
else.

But for me  the words "Vaudeville Festival" (as there was in Gardner 
Maine back in the late 80's, early 90's) does conjure up an image of a 
festival  that is  heavy on physical acts (tapdancing, juggling, 
magic, clowns) and light on the other stuff..  Perhaps its conditioning.  
Perhaps its my own position (such as it is) within the sphere of 
performances.  But I think it's also the current zeitgeist of the word.

Googling "vaudeville festival" gets me to the Hawaian Juggling 
Association, which has put on a juggling "Vaudeville Festival"  for the 
last 18 years-- mostly afficionados (although they do have variety acts-- 
I know the tap dancer Brian Jones has performed there a number of years.)

As you say in your book-- it's the "New Vaudeville" moniker that may be 
the cause of it.  

"Taking an entire bill of New Vaudeville acts and  calling it vaudeville 
would be sort of like presenting a show of  percussionists and calling it 
New Wave Symphony Orchestra." (p. 284)

I agree, (Although I might argue that we are accordionists!)

But for whatever reason, when you mention to your postman that you 
are going to see two vaudevillians perform today-- it's much more likely 
that they think you are going to see a couple of guys doing physical 
comedy  like Irwin and Shiner than a song and dance team like (HMMMM... I 
can't think of a current song and dance team! Lane and Broderick?)
  

    
I've been away a few days, and missed the chance to add to some of
these great discussions.

• on the NYPL Vaudeville exhibition - I agree that the show is
collection driven and lacking narrative focus. That has as much to do
with the design of the show as with its contents. a recurring problem
at that venue. But some of the material should be seen, especially the
posters, the drawings of entire vaudeville billings (with ratings!) and
of course the chance to hear some of the vaudeville classic committed
to disc at the time.

• on blackface. John Strausbuagh's has a book coming out in may called
BLACK LIKE YOU about blackface that is sure to be provcative (and
good). I agree, to talk about only blackface of the mistreatment of
African Americans in vaudeville is missing most of the story, but
audiences don't get aggittated about how Joe Cook demonstrated how he
was not going to play a banjo like five Hawaiians, but somehow they
feel the need to get worked about blackface. Go figure.

• on earning a living. any live performer will tell you that earning a
decent pay is a sweat, but then the folks who work at Walmart feel the
same. On a whole this country is woeful about its support of the arts
- the performing or any other kind, so vaudevillians should not take it
personally. I agree with Travis that good marketing and captilization
are important, but a four leaf clover or at least one wish from a genie
is also very helpful.

• on plays in vaudeville. The great Sarah Bernhardt ended her career
playing slimmed down versions of her great stage successes on the
vaudeville circuit. Ethel Barrymore also played condensed version of
her plays in vaudeville. Shakepearean actors did the same. They did not
call it variety for nothing. the plays lasted anywhere form 125 to 30
minutes, and were nothing more than a serious of highlights of the
shows. some plays were written specifically for the vaude stage, but I
don't think many of these pieces survive or would be worthwhile
reviving today.

• the black circuit had another name TOBA - "tough on black asses,"
and remanents of this circuit survive today, where plays by and for
black audiences can do fairly well. Newark has a theater. I am sure
Detroit and other cities with a signficant black population have
similar theaters.

• I agree with Travis and Adam. Vaudeville's name is exciting for the
press, but not so exciting for an audience. I think some audiences fear
it will be a musty relic rather than lots of fun. I do think it needs
the wide range of performers (physical, comic, musical, and even short
plays) to create a world that people will come back to. Audiences also
need a steady diet and places they can go to see it to build an
allegiance to it.
  

    
Well, yes, re-reading it, Adam, you and I have largely been arguing
the same point. And we're not even drunk!  I thought of a top-flight
dance act--Savion Glover (or any of his acolytes). That'd put some
butts in seats! 
  

    
>And we're not even drunk

Speak for yourself!  :o)

Found an interesting online exhibition of Black Vaudeville
<http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/douglass/index.php>
  

    
I agree with Adam about the word "vaudeville." For the majority of the
public it evokes a very particular kind of show. Perhaps this
association is incorrect, or at least doesn't encompass the full range
of old-time vaudeville, but I think you've got to adjust a marketing
campaign to the public's bias to be successful. 
  

    
Maybe "variety" is safer. 
  

    


There is a vaudeville festival now entering its third year, the
Moisture Festival in Seattle.  (not a lot of data up on their web 
site for this year beyond the dates)  www.moisturefestival.com

They started out with a long weekend in 2004, progressed to about
10 days in 2005, and are going for 3 weeks this spring.  And
yes, they're calling it a 'comedy/variete festival', not using the
word vaudeville, but I think that's because most people really do
not know what that is.

I would ask - does that matter ? There's a lot of precedent in 
Europe for using the term variety/variete, and that's where
many of those performers are from.

Last year's performers included Avner the Eccentric, Hacki Ginda
(extraordinary East German clown, former prize winner at Monte
Carlo), Tom Noddy, a few former Karamazovs, members of the 
physical theater troupe UMO, Frank Olivier, and a long string of
funny/musical/physical/eccentric performers.  

The History page on their site gives an interesting perspective
on their view of the history of vaudeville and variety arts. 

One of <dleopold1>'s points seems critical:
 "Audiences also
 need a steady diet and places they can go to see it to build an
 allegiance to it."


Amen.
  

    
Bonjour! (Thought I'd get in on the "variete" angle...)

Well, welcome to me!  My first posting on The Well, and I just
finished reading the pulsating repartee between you and your childhood
bud.  Yes!  That's what buds are for...

I would like to respond to the question that I believe noone actually
asked (an unfortunate sequela of working in the bizarre and fairly
narcissistc field I do):  Why don't we as a "culture" (and I use the
term very generously)have much interest in vaudeville and similar live
performance experiences?

Well,"lizp", let me jutht try to anther that:  I believe that
non-celluloid entertainment is an actual threat to the new-American
psyche!  Yes!  Too demanding...too immediate...too interactive...too
personal.  That's audience-wise.  Now, mogul-wise:  Too hard to
package...turn the proverbial profit...manipulate...and otherwise
bowdlerize (ooh, a little clang association?)  As our ersatz-bud
McLuhan warned, "The medium is the message."  I would tweak this to
reflect the current sad state of "entertainment" in this country today,
and I quip: "The mediocre is the message!"  (Not bad for first thing
in the morning...and not even done with my first cup of coffee.) 
Thanks for letting me maunder.
  

    
Whoa, that last post was awesome! I think you hit the nail on the
head...the attitudes of both producers and audiences are part of the
ever-accelerating national mania for profit and efficiency. We run the
risk of being redundant here (this stuff has been written about for
decades), but this is a deodorized, alienated culture. We don't want a
dialogue with our fellow man, nor do we want to make any effort or any
compromise. It is a culture of instant fulfillment of all needs in
their most pure state at the lowest cost...and impatience at anything
less. To me, the nadir of this tendency is internet pornography...the
evolution of a healthy, social amusement experience (cinema) into a
dark, solitary, obsessive compulsion. Vaudeville was (and is) about
reaching across barriers, not just cultural ones (as in the many
ethnicities and cultures that interface on stage), but the barriers
that separate us all. The amazing thing about a live audience is that
it is UNITED. That seems increasingly hard to swallow for a people who
work in cubicles, drive home alone in SUVs, then go pop in a video. 
  

    
The Moisture Festival looks INCREDIBLE! Shame on me for not knowing
about it!
  

    
You gotta love its name.
  

    
I have never had a bad time at live theatre, ever, even very
amateurish local productions.  There is something magic about actually
being there.
  

    
"The wire is life" said Karl Wallenda, and I think that is the same
for audiences. The shared bond spent in a dark room watching (and
participating to some extent) also includes the shared risk that
something could go wrong. Some of my best nights in the theater have
occurred when the power went out, the actor lost his lines, a cue
missed etc. Being part of the live performance when the 4th wall drops
and we are all in it together, now that's exciting.

I agree the entertainment industry sees live performance as too
inefficient to deliver profit or product. And certainly the price for
most live performances is an obvious hurdle for many folks. Let's face
it, when a person has the choice of paying $10 to see King Kong for
three hours or paying ten times that to see actors recreating the
Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons in Jersey Boys, no matter how good
the latter is (and I haven't seen it, so I have no opinion) it is out
of reach for most.

Even off-Broadway and regional theater, hell even a lot of cabaret is
at a price point that gives people a simple reason not to go.

Now the same is true for organized sports, but they pull an audience
even though ticket prices have climbed significantly in the last 20
years. But sports does have its own section of the news (print and
video) devoted to it, that live performance just doesn't have. Of
course children are indoctrinated into the sports world from an early
age, while going to the theater is the rare once or twice a year "when
they get older."

No easy solution for vaudeville or any live performance, but the show
must and does go on. Yes, the masses are dumb, cholorformed by media
conglomerates, kept ignorant by our education system, etc. But the need
to perform, and I think the desire to see performances is as old as
anything on earth. Like everything else worthwhile, performance is is
constant need of reinvention. Performers (and playwrights and
producers) must always remember that connecting with audience is all
important. We must continue to find new ways to connect. Having just
spent two years with Irving Berlin, it was instructive to see someone
who created enduring art while at the same time reaching a wide
audience. He said you could not write a popular song, it had to become
one.

Berlin had great faith in the mob. Their instant acceptance or
rejection of a number in vaudeville was a definitive verdict for him,
and no amount of critical commentary could persuade him otherwise. His
patriotism was rooted in the fact that he listened to the nation, and
then wrote it songs. I think he lost his touch only after he became too
old to hear. Not necessarily in age, but in ideas. 

For vaudeville, the name might disappear, and if does, then so be it.
Performers won't. They might be further out on the fringes, but this is
essentially where vaudeville began. I am not sure how many people
today would want to be in a vaudeville audience at the turn of the
century. It was a tough crowd. If an audience can be found on the
fringes for vaudeville, perhaps the ripple effect will generate a
larger audience. The ball seems to be in our court.
  

    
Switching gears in a big way, I nominate Berlin for most significant
songwriter in show business history. It was one of the happy
discoveries of my vaudeville research. I don't think a lot of people
are familiar with the sheer LONGEVITY of his success as a songwriter.
he managed to stay in tune with that public longer than anyone else
that I know of. His catalog is amazing...people know dozens of his
songs, if they dont necessarily know that he wrote them. And he was
quite old when he stopped being in touch, and by then (while he had
managed to evolve over so many styles over so many decades) the changes
were too drastic. The big songwriters of the new era were Dylan and
Lennon-McArtney
  

    
I will second that nomination (biased as I am). 

Few artists have left the mark on American culture that Irving Berlin
has. During his  extraordinary long and active career from 1907 to
1966, Berlin was at the forefront of every form of mass popular
culture: sheet music, the Broadway stage, radio, records (he had
twenty-six number-one songs), film, and television. He was an early
adaapter to everything from illustrated song slides to animated films

Of course, American culture also left its mark on Berlin. He took a
variety of ethnic dialects and melodies, the strains of classical music
and opera, the roar of the city, the wit of the Algonquin Round Table,
the bravado of Broadway, and a larger-than-life Hollywood, and
transmuted those elements into his own idiom: songs that speak to and
for everyone. In the words of Jerome Kern, Berlin gave “these
impressions back to the world, — simplified, — clarified, — glorified.”
 

For Irving Berlin there really was no business like show business.
Early on he learned how to “sell” a song, and never lost his enthusiasm
for it. He understood the commerce that goes hand in hand with
creativity, and without any formal training in either music or
business, he became a genius at both.

“It’s just a fad,” said Berlin in 1958 when asked about the latest
trend in popular music: rock and roll. “It’s rather hard on the ears
and the sensibilities, but we have had novelty periods before. They
come to an end and melody always wins out.” To another reporter he
declared, “Rock and roll music has lasted longer than I expected. But
it will eventually die out, as did ragtime, swing, and other temporary
successes.” At seventy, Berlin was simply too old to rock and roll. The
shift in public taste, and the way music would be made for the next
half-century would finally cause him to retire.

Not only in popular music with the Beatles and Dylan, but on the
Broadway stage with Sondheim, Kander and Ebb, and others. Composers
thought of the gestalt of the whole show, not simply how many hits it
had. Berlin was dismissive. “When they don’t have a hit they call them
integrated. I believe in hits.” Berlin did see his music as an art
form, feeling, “it’s just as important to write a hit song as it is to
paint a beautiful picture,” but he understood that “I’m not a composer.
I’m a songwriter. That’s all I ever was. It’s all I ever wanted to
be.”

For the songwriter, it was simple: “In the final analysis, it’s the
people—not thinking as individuals but en masse — who make it a hit,
and they can’t be wrong. You know, sometimes some writers get so expert
in their jobs, they get a little too good. They write oblique songs.
They’re embarrassed to say ‘I love you,’ or to mention mother or to say
‘’God Bless America.’ But the public isn’t embarrassed at all. These
things are universal. Everybody falls in love. Everybody hates to get
up in the morning. Everybody loves America.” 

Now one could quibble the last sentence, but the essence is true.       If
he was the rare writer who owned his copyrights, he was virtually alone
in being among the writers who outlived some of them. For a sharp
businessman like Berlin it must have been tough to see his early songs,
even “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” move into the public domain. 

In a sense that is where they have always been. The public embraced
his music early on and never let it go. For generations of Americans,
Berlin supplied the soundtrack to their lives. His songs are so much a
part of American culture that it hardly seems possible they were
written by any one person or so recently. Songs like “God Bless
America,” “White Christmas,” “Always,” “Anything You Can Do,” and
“Puttin’ on the Ritz” are a part of the national consciousness, and
most people sing them without any idea who wrote them. I think you
could stop just about anybody onthe street and they would be familar
with at least five Berlin songs, even they did not know who wrote them.
they are folks songs really, and indeed, he inspired one of the great
folk songs, Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land."

Travis, you have to come back next week and my topic and repeat your
post, so I can rave on like this again.
  

    
Berlin was right, I think, about "melody always wins out." That's why
Lennon-McCartney songs will last as long as Berlin songs. 
  

    
Whereas JayZ, not so much.