Tag Archives: vaudeville

The Nicholas Brothers, Fayard and Harold

Marvin Jones & Son are a black father-and-son dance team in The Life Fantastic. Marvin is suffering from ill health so his son, Pietro, has to go on stage solo, which means he must invent new dance routines at the last minute.

A dance team in real life, The Nicholas Brothers appeared on vaudeville stages as suave, accomplished dancers. They were elegant and acrobatic. Many feel that there have never been dancers as good as they were. And still, they had to face racial bigotry as they traveled around the country.

(Photograph from the Dance Division of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Astor, Lenox,
and Tilden Foundations)

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The Life Fantastic, a vaudeville timeline

Why read this book and discuss vaudeville in your classroom?

In your classroom, you’ll find this interactive, pictorial timeline to be useful for display to enhance your discussions. The Timeline accompanies the PBS American Masters video, Vaudeville (November 1997, directed by Rosemary Garner, Greg Palmer).

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The Life Fantastic: Readers’ Theater

Readers’ theater is an ideal way to involve students from middle school through high school with The Life Fantastic.

Maggie Reagan, in Booklist, wrote about The Life Fantastic, “The plot … provides much fodder for discussing race relations and the power of song. The script-style segments that open each part could be useful for engaging students in readers’ theater.”

Here’s a sample of one of those scripts from The Life Fantastic. Based on the book, your students could expand from readers’ theater to a mannequin challenge to short skits in a silent movie or early talkies style.

Download the script for educational use.

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The Life Fantastic: Vaudeville on PBS

One of the most complete looks at the vaudeville stage is PBS’ American Masters: Vaudeville. You can watch it in its entirety (two hours) or break it up into segments for your classroom to view. Your students will enjoy doing compare-and-contrast sessions between current entertainment and vaudeville as well as talking about and researching racial diversity, a reflection of the country’s attitudes, prompted by the researched story within The Life Fantastic.

You’ll hear from people who have first-hand experience of the vaudeville stage as well as historians who discuss vaudeville’s meaning and importance at a time when America was in the midst of major changes.

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The Life Fantastic: What was vaudeville?

With Teresa determined to sing on the vaudeville stage, she was looking for work in what was viewed as a more wholesome environment than the entertainment that had gone before. Vaudeville began in the 1880s and ended in the 1930s with the advent of widely distributed film and radio. The Life Fantastic is set in 1913, so vaudeville was in its heyday. Here’s a short history quoted from Virtual Vaudeville, University of Georgia, sponsored by The National Science Foundation.:

“Vaudeville appealed to a broad cross-spectrum of the public, representing every class and ethnic group. The wealthiest patrons could purchase exclusive box seats or seats in the parterre, while working class spectators could purchase inexpensive seats in the galleries. Vaudeville had something for everyone, and particular acts in the vaudeville lineup appealed differently to different groups in the audience. Irish comics and tenors, for instance, found a ready audience among the “lace curtain” Irish in the audience while WASP mothers out shopping with a child might prefer the circus-like entertainment of an animal act or juggling.

“Variety entertainment emerged gradually throughout the nineteenth century, starting in circus sideshows, concert saloons, burlesque theatres, minstrel shows, and dime museum performances. These early forms of variety theatre had an unsavory reputation associated with rough-house behavior [which] appealed mainly to working class men.

B.F. Keith, vaudeville theatre owner, founder of The Keith Circuit

“Producers such as Tony Pastor in the 1880s and especially B.F. Keith and E.F. Albee in the 1890s gave birth to vaudeville by turning these earlier forms of variety theatre into “respectable” family entertainment. This transformation was not an easy one. For example, Douglas Gilbert, in American Vaudeville (1940), describes the challenge Keith and Albee confronted when they first opened the Bijou Theatre in Philadelphia in the late 1880s:

“[Boys in the gallery] screamed at acts, shouted obscene epithets at girl performers, and otherwise made life hell for actors and more orderly patrons. To curb them, Albee insisted that caps be removed, forbade smoking, and banned all whistling, stamping, spitting on the floor, and crunching of peanuts.” (206)

Teresa chose to go on stage in vaudeville where the audience was more genteel and more likely to appreciate a singer of popular songs.

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The Life Fantastic Vaudeville, Burlesque, and the Follies

What’s the difference between vaudeville, burlesque, and revue shows like The Ziegfield Follies?

Burlesque originated in London in the 1830s and ran until the 1890s where it was most often a musical theater parody of a well-known play or opera or ballet. Brought to America in the 1840s, American Burlesque took a turn toward satiric and bawdy productions which usually incorporated exotic dancers. These performances were frequented by working-class men. Tickets were very inexpensive.

“Vaudeville grew out of that burlesque tradition when Tony Pastor and E.B. Keith recognized, in the 1880s, that middle class families would come to their theaters, and create more profit, if they had classier acts that wouldn’t offend or scandalize women and children. Types of acts included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies.” (Wikipedia)

The Ziegfield Follies were on Broadway and then radio from 1907 to 1936. The costumes were lavish, the sets were splendiferous, and there were always Ziegfield Girls parading up and down long stairways in fanciful costumes. The acts were similar to those on the vaudeville stage. In fact, many performers moved easily from burlesque to vaudeville to Follies venues, especially the most well-known stars.

Teresa wouldn’t have dreamed of going on the burlesque stage. Because of its origins in burlesque, many people believed that vaudeville was only “one step up from girlie shows.” Vaudeville was attainable but the Follies, performed only in New York City, were beyond her reach when The Life Fantastic takes place. In 1913, Teresa was just beginning her career. After the last chapter of the book … where do you think Teresa’s career will take her next?

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The Life Fantastic, Question One

Liza, what is The Life Fantastic about?

It is 1913 and vaudeville is America’s most popular form of entertainment. Thousands of theatres and opera houses across the country host vaudeville troupes, including the Princess Theater in Brattleboro, Vermont. There, fifteen-year-old Teresa LeClair—who has a “voice like a nightingale”—remembers the thrill of singing onstage as a child. But her parents gave up life on the road, and her father has decided that Teresa, blessed with perfect pitch, should drop out of school and work in the tuning rooms of the local organ factory.

Determined to escape, Teresa wins an amateur singing contest in Vermont and steals away on the night train to New York. She hopes to become a star on Broadway’s “Great White Way.” She has no idea of the challenges that lie ahead, and her younger brother, Pascal (a budding juggler) complicates her adventure by stowing away on the same train. In the city, Teresa struggles to follow her dream and care for her brother, while fearing that her father will find them and force her to return home.

Brattleboro, Vermont today … the historic district

Luckily, a more experienced vaudevillian named Maeve—who performs with a troupe of circus dogs—takes Teresa and Pascal under her wing. She coaches them as they perform in two-bit, amateur night competitions. In New York, Teresa runs into Pietro Jones and his father, talented African American dancers who had also performed in Brattleboro. Teresa and Pietro become competitors as well as prickly friends. At a time when young black men could be lynched for simply looking at a white girl, Pietro understands, better than Teresa, the danger of their relationship. As they compete in one contest after another, Teresa’s father tracks her down in New York—and demands that she return with her brother to Vermont. Instead, Teresa slips away again, wins a place on vaudeville’s Silver Circuit, and travels west with Pietro, his father, Maeve—and the dogs.

W.E.B. DuBois

Performing in Western cities and towns, their vaudeville troupe appears in five or six shows a day. They “jump” from one town to the next, sleeping on trains or in fleabag hotels. Every performer risks audience disapproval, which can cause a stage manager to give them “the hook”—and send them packing. As they travel, Teresa’s eyes are opened to the discrimination her black friends face on the road. She also learns, from Pietro, about a new movement for equal rights growing under the leadership of the great civil rights activist and writer, W.E.B. DuBois.

Teresa’s friendship with Pietro deepens to attraction, even as they realize they could never be together. When Pietro’s father becomes ill and can’t perform, Teresa and Pietro sing a duet onstage—with dire consequences for their careers and their safety. Teresa’s struggle to find her voice onstage and in her life, far from the support of her family, takes place against a complex backdrop of American history.

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Vaudeville Stars in Blackface

In The Life Fantastic, Pietro rebels against a common practice: applying “blackface” in order to appear onstage in vaudeville theaters. Smearing burnt cork on one’s face and hands was meant to obscure the skin color of the actor underneath the makeup. It was a carryover from the days of black minstrel shows. For Pietro and many other black performers, it was demeaning. And yet, African American actors, singers, dancers, and comedians appearing in blackface opened the door for black performers who would eventually go on stage without cork.

Stephen Foster Hard Times sheet music

Songs from this era, especially those of Stephen Foster, were favorites on the vaudeville stage. Yet they’re seldom sung today because of his lyrics, which reflect a time of racial intolerance. A number of historians share their feelings about Stephen Foster’s lyrics.

“It’s part of black history and it’s part of American history and you can’t change history. It’s good to reflect on it. I think it’s more important to study history as it is, lest we ever repeat ourselves.” –Nancy Griffith, musician

Learn more: (American Experience on PBS, “Blackface Minstrelsy”)

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