Book Review: Vaudeville and the Making of Modern Entertainment, 1890-1925 - by David Monod (Book) (original) (raw)
CAML Review / Revue de l'ACBM
David Monod's study of vaudeville's role as "the United States' first modern mass entertainment" (2) is a fundamental reading in the study of popular music, theatre, and film. Monod, a history professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, deftly evokes the vitality of now archaic variety acts and elucidates the early decisions by theatre owners and entertainers who created the foundations for popular entertainment in America. He provides an overview of the performance and business practices of vaudeville informed by statistics and anecdotes compiled from a detailed survey of 35,000 reviews (transcriptions available online at the author's website, "Vaudeville America"). In contrast to other recent studies of vaudeville, which, as Monod comments, tend to focus on understanding the intent of individual performers and interpreting their performances as transgressive (7), he focuses on the development of the modern cultural and business environments that influenced, and were influenced by, performers and performances.
Sign up to get access to over 50M papers
Related papers
CFP Immagine 25 - Vaudeville, Variety and Cinema 1895-1935
Immagine. Note di storia del cinema n. 25 Dossier: Vaudeville, Varietà e Cinema, 1895-1935 Vaudeville, Variety and Cinema, 1885-1935 A cura di/edited by M. Magdalena Brotons Capó, Elisa Uffreduzzi Scadenza/deadline: 30 giugno/june 2021 CFP and info: http://www.airsc.org/callforpapers/
Vaudeville: The Last Theatre of the Working Class
PhD Dissertation, 2020
The agency of working people in the making of Australian history has not been recognised in the scholarship on Australian vaudeville. Yet the development of a successful vaudeville industry coincides with the period of the greatest working-class mobilisation in Australia. In this dissertation I argue that vaudeville theatres operated as working-class publics where ideas about power were shared, and that vaudeville contributed to the formation of the working class and Australian history in a way not previously recognised. I analyse scripts written by Australian vaudeville comedian, George Wallace, to support my thesis that vaudeville theatres operated as publics. The scripts reveal that Wallace dramatised and shared ideas with the vaudeville audience about the experience of being working-class under capitalism. In particular, I show how Wallace uses violence in his scriptsas a dramatic technique to bring powerlessness into relief, and as a character strategy to gain or regain power. The creative practice component of my thesis, the play, Ferocious, uses evidence surrounding a violent and mysterious death in a creek bed in Victoria in 1908 to explore the historical milieu for vaudeville writing and comedy. I foreground the mystery to synthesise what I observed about the use of music, comedy and episodic storytelling in Wallace's scripts with my research into the working-class context of vaudeville. In the practice of writing the play, I extend the adventure narrative, common to Wallace's scripts. Ferocious gives life to hidden working-class worlds and histories, including those of vaudeville artists. I hope the play revives an audience for silenced voices. Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all property rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). ………………………………………… Signature …………………………………….. Witness Signature ……….………………… Date The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.
Processes of Spatialization in the Americas: Configurations and Narratives, 2018
In the period from the 1880s to the 1910s, Canada had experienced a strong wave of Americanization of its theatrical institutions. Taking a closer look at these transnational theatrical relations, this chapter revisits the role of the Canadian connections in the process of drawing the boundaries of modern entertainment industries in North America. The first part argues that these developments do not fit in national frameworks or in concepts of Americanization as the transnational export of American cultural products. The consolidation of theatrical industries such as legitimate theater, vaudeville and burlesque ran along regional lines that crossed national borders and covered parts of both the United States and Canada, including Montreal. Taking the example of large-scale business conflicts in the field of burlesque, the chapter then investigates how entrepreneurs in the city not only actively integrated their businesses into wider North American theater networks, but also challenged the dominance of US-Americans in the industry. These changing spatializations of theatrical entertainment did not only include the transcontinental expansion and subsequent drawing of new regional boundaries within the emerging industries. They also entailed new forms of organizing space, as the business evolved towards increasing centralization, rationalization and exclusive territorial control. Antje Dietze, Americanization of Show Business? Shifting Territories of Theatrical Entertainment in North America at the Turn of the 20th Century. In Gabriele Pisarz-Ramirez and Hannes Warnecke-Berger, eds., Processes of Spatialization in the Americas: Configurations and Narratives. Peter Lang, Berlin 2018, 193–215. https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/65439
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.