Variety show

“ Of late, the variety-show has accepted the aid of the exhibitors of moving-pictures, just as the exhibitors of moving-pictures have invoked the casual assistance of song-and-dance teams and of other vaudeville performers to relieve the strain on the eyes of their spectators. And the introduction of the cinematograph, or the bioscope, or whatever it may be called, is, perhaps, the only real novelty in our latter-day variety-show. All the other performers are presenting feats of a kind known to our remote ancestors, even if these feats are now more skilfully presented. ”

“ Not only does the variety-show flourish because it is exactly adjusted to the unintellectual and purely sensational likings of the Tired Business Man and to the similar tastes of his fit mate, who is fatigued because her life is idle and empty, but for his benefit also, and for hers the summer song-show and the alleged "comic opera" and the misnamed "review" have been called into existence. ”

“ A great deal of work is available for other performances, and so we do not regret it a bit; we propose doing “As You Like It” again when you are down here, and meanwhile we give diversified entertainments which Jack calls variety shows, but which in reality are very chaste and elegant occasions. ”

“ Shows vary in size from cheap affairs, capable of being carried in three railroad cars, to the elaborate institutions which require two long special trains for their transportation. The expense of running a large show is enormous, although in advertising this expense is usually exaggerated. There are a great many traveling tented exhibitions which "bill," or advertise, like a circus, and in the eyes of the general public pass for circuses, but which, in reality, are variety exhibitions given under canvas. ”

“ There are entertainment values that the showman himself must be able to create from his available material, which he will find and develop in dialogue, lyrics, tuneful music, voice, singing, dancing, characterization, costumes, settings, scenery, properties, lighting, and everything else connected in any way with the stage picture or the presentation of his offering. The publicity and exploitation of the show will tax his showmanship from another angle and is of great importance to the success of the play or the artist. ”

“ The stars are becoming so numerous, and, indeed, so insignificant, that even members of the variety profession with the thinnest pretensions in the world to dramatic distinction, and there are few on the legitimate stage above the ranks of utility, who have not aspirations of the same bright and twinkling kind. The beginning of every season finds a hundred or more new combinations, with little talent and less money, starting out on the road ”

“ Of late it has seemed to me that it was only the boys with French blood that learned anything and they, of course, knew it all already.
For entertainment Company A can upon occasion furnish its own show. This was demonstrated by an impromptu programme staged in the hut the other night; there’s no use we have discovered in planning things beforehand, if one does, as sure as fate, all the star performers “catch guard” that day! Pat by request acted as stage-manager and master of ceremonies. To stimulate the artists we announced prizes. ”

“ Very few of the cheap493 variety artists of the present day are worthy of even a mean place in the "legit.," as they designate the legitimate stage; and it may be said, too, that some stars who have succeeded in reaching the legitimate boards would scarcely be reckoned bright ornaments among the gems of the variety stage. ”

“ This however it is reasonable to doubt, as so long a continuance of one play upon the stage is a very wide deviation from the practice of that time; when the ardour for theatrical entertainments was not yet diffused through the whole people, and the audience, consisting nearly of the same persons, could be drawn together only by variety. ”

“ “At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes. And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means.” ”

“ For my own part I can honestly say that I never in my life heard a concert announcement made in my show without feeling like getting up and leaving in disgust; but all classes of show-goers must be pleased, and there is one class which demands the concert and another class that wants the side shows.
A SILENT PARADE FROM ALBANY TO THE STATE LINE
I am glad to know that the circus man who speaks of his patrons as "gillies," and who endeavors to obtain his wealth by fair or foul means, is becoming more and more rare. ”

“ Every movement of the theatre, by a skilful poet, is communicated, as it were by magic, to the spectators; who weep, tremble, resent, rejoice, and are inflamed with all the variety of passions, which actuate the several personages of the drama. ”

“ Waiters move about through the audience, taking orders for beverages, and men and women drink and guzzle, and men smoke during the entire performance. No matter what else stops, the flow of beer never does. It is very like Time in this particular, constantly moving.
The life of a variety actor is a very busy one after eight at night. If he has any popularity at all he has engagements at three and even four theaters. ”

“ What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious, you know; ”

“ If they have to handle some hand-prop, they will drop it at the wrong time. Most people are very clumsy in the presence of an audience. Rehearse them with hats. Gentlemen have very often come on the stage in amateur performances and worn their hats in drawing rooms in the presence of ladies. I have seen them take them off and place them in the most ridiculous places, even in professional shows. ”

“ For the stage is not merely the meeting-place of all the arts, but is also the return of art to life. ”

“ With the color schemes effectively planned, there follows a further conference between producer and costume designer, in which plot, locale, atmosphere, characters, lyrics, music, and everything else with a bearing on the dance or play in contemplation is fully gone over and considered. The personality of the principals is given attention, and the various possible effects of the ensemble or chorus groupings, evolution and pictures are carefully planned, with regard to lights and color effects. ”

“ But music, rhythm, dancing, song, passing through the sense, fix a pleasure and titilation in the sportive part of the soul and therefore none of these pleasures is enjoyed in secret, nor wants darkness nor walls about it, according to the women's phrase; but circuses and theatres are built for them. And to frequent shows and music-meetings with company is both more delightful and more genteel; because we take a great many witnesses, not of a luxurious and intemperate, but of a pleasant and respectable, manner of passing away our time. ”

“ A producer of plays, assuming that he is a man of experience, never feels comfortable after a great reception has been given his play on a first night. He knows that the reception in the theater does not always correspond to the feelings of future audiences. Every thinking manager knows that his play, in order to succeed, must send its audience away possessed of some distinct feeling. A successful play is a play that reflects, whatever the feeling it reflects. ”

“ It is not always them that has the most that makes the most show. ”

“ It is also an incongruity to see men sitting in the presence of an audience with their heads covered. Then, again, the attention of the audience would be distracted from the play by a feeling of curiosity as to the reason why the hats were not removed. These are little things that should be avoided; but in general they are not likely to intrude themselves where proper regard is paid to the general appearance of a scene. The make-up of the stage is exactly like the drawing of a picture, in which lights and colors are studied, with a view to their effect [190] upon the whole. ”

“ It is the custom on the stage in all good, murderous melodramas, to present the tragic and the comic scenes in as regular alternation as the layers of red and white in a side of streaky, well-cured bacon. ”

“ The Cosmic Director has written His own plays, and assembled the tremendous casts for the pageant of the centuries. From the dark booth of eternity, He pours His creative beam through the films of successive ages, and the pictures are thrown on the screen of space. Just as the motion-picture images appear to be real, but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusive seeming. ”

“ let not censure term our fate our choice,
The stage but echoes back the publick voice;
The drama's laws the drama's patrons give,
For we that live to please, must please to live. ”

“ And concluding, which is clear, The growing drama has outgrown such toys Of simulated stature, face, and speech, It also, peradventure, may outgrow The simulation of the painted scene, Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume; And take for a worthier stage the soul itself, Its shifting fancies and celestial lights, With all its grand orchestral silences To keep the pauses of the rhythmic sounds. ”

“ for a taste for variety is one of the characteristic passions of democracy. ”

“ Outside show is a poor substitute for inner worth. ”

“ A few moments after he found himself on the stage amid the garish gas and the dim scenery, acting before the innumerable faces of the void. It surprised him to see that the play which he had known at rehearsals for a disjointed lifeless thing had suddenly assumed a life of its own. It seemed now to play itself, he and his fellow actors aiding it with their parts. ”

“ The stars are a free show; it don’t cost anything to use your eyes.’
‘What a good idea! ”

“ The abundance of room, the free, pure air, the constant delight of the eyes in the changing landscape, the soft tremor of the boat, so steady upon her keel, the variety of the little world on board,—all form a charm which no good heart in a sound body can resist. ”

“ They are, as it were, train-bearers in the pageant of life, and hold a glass up to humanity, frailer than itself. We see ourselves at second-hand in them: they shew us all that we are, all that we wish to be, and all that we dread to be. The stage is an epitome, a bettered likeness of the world, with the dull part left out: and, indeed, with this omission, it is nearly big enough to hold all the rest. What brings the resemblance nearer is, that, as they imitate us, we, in our turn, imitate them. ”

“ For the stage displays the first vigorous expression, as the natural thing and without conspicuous restraint, of private individuality. ”

“ As in a theatre the eyes of men After a well-grac'd actor leaves the stage Are idly bent on him that enters next, Thinking his prattle to be tedious; ”

“ “I keep a band of music in my ante-room,” he said once to her. “It has orders to play without stopping; it renders me two excellent services. It keeps the sounds of the world from reaching the private apartments, and it makes the world think that dancing’s going on within.” ”

“ The spectacle is simply the common language of this separation. Spectators are linked solely by their one-way relationship to the very center that keeps them isolated from each other. The spectacle thus reunites the separated, but it reunites them only in their separateness. ”

“ The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting. ”

“ The same disgust which was manifested and certainly enjoyed by Duse, when she demanded that the stage be cleared of actors in order to save the creative life of the stage, is the same disgust that makes us yearn for wooden dolls to make abstract movements in order that we may release art from its infliction of the big "A", to take away from art its pricelessness and make of it a new and engaging diversion, pastime, even dissipation if you will; ”

“ On the stage he was natural, simple, affecting,
'Twas only that, when he was off, he was acting:
With no reason on earth to go out of his way,
He turn'd and he varied full ten times a day; ”

“ The constant variability of every part and organ, with the enormous powers of increase possessed by plants, have enabled them to become again and again readjusted to each change of condition as it occurred, resulting in that endless variety, that marvellous complexity, and that exquisite colouring which excite our admiration in the realm of flowers, and constitute them the perennial charm and crowning glory of nature. ”

“ Few Germans, perhaps few men of any modern nation, have a proper sense of an æsthetic whole:—they praise and blame by passages; they are charmed by passages; and who has greater reason to rejoice at this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piece-work matter?" ”

“ You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball—why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding. ”

“ An Opera may be allowed to be extravagantly lavish in its Decorations, as its only Design is to gratify the Senses, and keep up an indolent Attention in the Audience. ”

“ In societies dominated by modern conditions of production, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation. ”