Ask the Vaudevillian

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

For several summers while I was in college, I was an actor in a period melodrama/vaudeville troupe. We did seven shows weekly from early May to mid-September.

Each night, the troupe would perform an hour-long melodrama (complete with constant atmospheric piano music and audience hisses and boos) followed by an hour of vaudeville routines, dances, and songs.

This was a major attraction in a tourist-ified ghost town in Montana. The opera house we performed in was built in the 1860s and had many of the original fixtures. The troupe was given room and board – which consisted of living in miners cabins built in 1867.

The town itself had just 110 permanent residents, but had over 2000 tourists walking the streets every day in the summer. Besides the opera house, the town boasts a working steam engine, gold mines, a boot hill, and the largest collection of Western artifacts in the world.

I can answer questions about the songs, my experiences performing, and quite a bit about local history.

2

What did you, specifically, do? Sing? Dance? Jokes? Did you rotate responsiblities?

3

All of the above.

We’d put on four melodramas and rotate them out on a monthly basis. I was usually cast as the tragic wife or tragic daughter. Always tragic… I sigh and gasp really well and I don’t trip over my skirts when I faint.

We’d rotate the vaudeville acts regularly. The requirement was that all the music needed to have been published between 1860 and 1930, so everything would have the right “feel.” All four girls did a fairly elaborate can-can routine for a few weeks. I sang a vamp number for awhile. Lots of “almost dirty” comedy routines; double-entendres and juggling. And every night, around 8:00, the entire troupe would sing a patriotic medley for the finale.

And beside all that, we all got to build sets and mop the stage.

4

Ok, Local History, GO!

And what were your costumes like?

5

What’s the preferred tying-the-helpless-lass-to-the-traintracks laugh? Is it “Mwahaha!” or “Nyahaha!”?

6

Takes a deep breath

In 1863, Virginia City, Montana was the site of one of the largest goldmines in the west.
Practically overnight, thousands of people descended on this one little valley.

As is often the case, where there is gold, there are people who want to have gold without going through the hassle of acquiring it legally. Nowdays, we have the Nigerian email scammers, in Virginia City, you had the Road Agents

The Road Agents were a group of men – kids, nearly, as the average age of these guys was late teens and early twenties – who would rob and kill lucky prospectors taking gold to one of the “real” cities in the Idaho Territory. In a one year period, over 200 people were killed.

Eventually, the citizens of Virginia City fought back with the time honored Western tradition of vigilantism. A group of vigilantes would hang members of the Road Agents. They marked the houses of their targets with the numbers 3-7-77. To this day, no one really knows exactly what those numbers mean. One guess says that the numbers point to Freemasonry. The numbers can still be found on Montana’s Highway Patrolmen badges today.

One of the vigilantes managed to infiltrate the Road Agents and discovered that the mastermind behind the whole operation was Henry Plummer, who also happened to be sheriff of Bannack, Virginia City’s nearest neighbor.

In the end, Henry Plummer was hanged on gallows he built.

Pant, pant, pant

This is the version of history I’d rattle of for tourists, of course – quick, snappy, and slightly exaggerated. But only slightly.

Costumes went all over the board. One of our melodramas was set in a New England whaling village, so the men in the troupe were weighed down by wool coats and knee-high galoshes. In July! Fun!

I struggled into a corset every night. Lots of frilly skits, high collars, and buttons. I still have nightmares about the tiny, tiny pearl buttons. And wigs! Ugh. Not comfortable at all.

My favorite costume was for our can can number. I’m second from the right.

7

There’s really two schools of thought on this and the debates can carry on long into the night.

I find that if your villain is big and barrel-chested, a deep “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!” is your best bet.

If your villain is rail-thin and gaunt, he should go with the snivelly “Nyah-ha-ha!”

But the black mustache is non-negotiable.

8

On the villain or the helpless lass? :stuck_out_tongue:

9

Other than dancing (and mopping!), how physical was your show? Like, was there much slapstick?

10

We had lots of slapstick and tons of pratfalls. I personally was dropped on my butt seven times a week for six weeks. And a new bruise every night.

We had several sword fights – a few serious, but more for laughs.

We would manage to empty out an entire seltzer bottle of water on an audience member ever night. Heh, comedy gold.

One guy was an awesome acrobat, so would constantly look for moments where he could flip and tumble.

Another guy did a Peter Pan number and we strung him up by wires on a jerry rigged pulley. To make him go up and down, you’d pull on ropes strung on either side of the stage. He’d attempt to sing a song while half the cast yanked him one way and then the other cast yanked him the t’other. I don’t know if the audience ever heard a word of the number, but they usually laughed at the spectacle.