THE AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 3956, 23 January 1900, Page 2

THE AMERICAN VAUDEVILLE THEATRE.

(By E. M. Boyle in “Scribner’s Magazine.”!

The Vaudeville Theatre is an American invention. There is nothing like it anywhere in the world. It is neither the Cafe Chatant, the English music-hall, nor the German garden. What has neen called by u variety of names, but has remained always and everywhere pretty much the same—reeky with smoke, damp with libations, gay with the informalities of the half-world —is now doing business with us under the patronage of the royal American family.

Having expurgated and rehabilitated the tawdry thing, the American invites in the family and neighbors, hands over to them beautiful theatres, lavishly decorated and appointed, nails up everywhere church and army regulations, and in the exuberance of his gaiety passes around the ice-water. He nasn’t painted out the f rench name, but that is because he has been, a.s usual, in a. hurry. Fourteen years ago this may have been a dream in a Yankee’s brain; now it is a part of us. me strictly professional world has been looking for the balloon to come down, for the fad to die out, for the impossible thing to stop, but year by year these theatres increase and multiply, till now they are flourishing all over the country.

Sometimes the Vaudeville theatre is an individual and independent enterprise; more often it belongs to a circuit. The patronage, expenses and receipts are enormous. One circuit will speak for all. It has a theatre in Mew York, one in Philadelphia, one in Boston, and one in Providence, and they give no Sunday performances; and yet these four theatres entertain over 5,000,000 people every year, give employment to 350 attacnes and to 3500 actors. Four thousand people pass in and out of each one of these theatres daily. Ten thousand dollars are distributed each week in salaries to the actors and 3500d01. to the attaches;' Take one theatre for example, the house in Boston. It is open the year round and it costs TOOOdol. a week to keep it open, while its patrons will average twenty-five thousand every week. On a holiday it will play to from ten to twelve thousand people. How is it possible?

A holiday to an American is a serious affair, so the doors of the theatre are open and the performance begins when most people are eating breakfast; 9.30 a.m. is not too soon for the man who pursues pleasure with the same intensity he puts into business. There are no reserved seats, so one must come first to be first served. One may go in at 9.30 a.m. and stay until 10.30 at night. If he leaves bis seat, though, the nearest standing Socialist diops into it and he must wait for a vacancy in order to sit down again. Not over two per cent, of an audience remains longer than to see the performance through once, but there are persons who secrete campaign rations about them, and camp there from 9.30 a.m. to 10.30 p.m., thereby surviving all of the acts twice and most of them four or five times. The management calculate to sell out the house, two and a half times on ordinary days and four times on holidays, and it is this system that makes such enormous receipts possible. Of course' I have ias on the circuit which is representative of the vaudeville idea at its best, but it is not alone in its standards or success, and what I have said about the houses in New York, Boston and Philadelphia applies more or less to all the principal cities of the country, and in a less degree of course to the houses iu the smaller cities.

Some of the theatres are never closed the year round. Some are content with three matinees a week in addition to their night performances. Others open their doors about noon and close them at 10.30 at night. These are called “continuous’ houses. It is manifest, I think, that the vaudeville theatre is playing an important part in the amusement world and in our national life., Perhaps we should be grateful. At present it would seem that the. moral tone of a theatre is in the inverfie ratio or the price of admission. The higher the price, the lower the tone. It is certain that plays , are tolerated and even acclaimed on the New York stage to-day which would have been removed with tongs half a dozen years ago. The local manager of every vaudeville house is its censor, and he lives up to his position laboriously and, I may say, religiously. The bill changes usually from week to week. It-is the solemn duty of ' this austere personage to sit through the first perfoxmance of every week and to ■ let no guilty- word or look escape. But this is precautionary only. “You "are to distinctly understand,” say ■the first words of the contracts of a certain well-known circuit, “that the management conducts this house upon a high plane of respectability and moral cleanliness,” etc. But long before the performer has entered the dressing-rooms, he lias been made acquainted with the following legend which everywhere adorns the walls ; NOTICE TO PERFORMERS.

You are 'hereby warned that your act must be free from all vulgarity and suggestiveness in woras, action and costume, while playing in any of Mr ’s houses, and all vulgar, double-meaning and pro r fane words and songs must be cut out of your act before the first performance. If you are in doubt as to what is right or wrong, submit it to the resident manager at rehearsal. _ ' Such words as Liar, Slob, Son-of-a-Gun, Devil, Sucker, Damn, and all other words unfit for the ears of ladies and children, also any reference to questionable streets, resorts, localities and bar-rooms, are prohibited under fine of instant discharge. And this is not merely a literary effort on the part of the management; it is obligatory and final. >When we have about accepted as conclusive the time-honoured theory that “You must give the public what it wants,” and that it wants bilgewater in champagne glasses, we are confronted with the vaudeville theatre, no longer an experiment, but a comprehensive fact. *