'The Variety Entertainer'and 'The Storyteller'

The Variety Entertainer

Entertainment and storytelling are the core of any dramatic or comedic play. Without these elements, there is no story and the audience will lose interest very fast if they even were interested in the beginning. These shows are always high on fun, low on intellectual demands; they have appealed to the general public.

Clowns and Fools

Clowns and fools on the stage do not rely on the written text as much, but more so they rely on tradition, improvisation, and physical action. Native American texts were based on ritual and had even contained elements of a ceremonial clown. Silent films contained the English pantomime and music hall tradition. In today’s world, the talking clown who uses verbal humor as a nontraditional written text is known as a stand-up comedian. Certain areas of Anglophone Africa have a form of variety entertainment called concert parties, which evolved in the 1920s, and its touring companies have performed all over western Africa since that time. African entertainment makes use of a wide variety of musical instruments, all made out of materials found in nature. These instruments include drums, gongs, bells, harps, flutes and xylophones. A hybrid combination of African, American, and European entertainments brought by traders which included musical numbers, brief topical sketches, female interpreters, and comic routines with clowns and tricksters winning the day in slap-stick romps with stock characters out of West African society. From early American film inspiration, the concert party clown often appears with heavy white lips of the American minstrel show, which is a 19^th century racist performance style in which whites both appreciated African American culture and music and at the same time created the denigrating blackface, white-lipped racial stereotype. Nowadays, these themes would cause a great deal of controversy due to the sensitive topic of racial stereotypes and tensions.

Today’s concert parties include a blending of traditional music that includes gospel, rock, and soul music mixed with African themes. Vaudeville is incorporated into many African performances; it is a popular American variety show form that incorporated many different kinds of dramatic texts and relied heavily on stand up routines and knockabout humor that had come out of earlier traditions. Vaudeville, in fact, has a counterpart which is less family-oriented called the burlesque show, which had bawdier humor and usually included striptease. The evening following these performances would normally end with an extended theatrical scene.

Variety Entertainment and the Avant-Garde

In the early 20^th century there was the avant-garde which focused on variety show performances as a means of developing a new artistic sensibility. Their goals were to break down the barrier separating the audience and the performers known as the fourth wall, rid themselves of the illusionary stage world, and to foster an active interaction with the audience. Some of the ideal performers in mind for this were: The clown, the acrobat, and the juggler; they were ideal because they represented no one else and nothing else other than themselves.

New vaudeville and new burlesque are new versions of the old popular entertainments discussed before; now these new clowns, comics, acrobats, mimes, and others bring an aesthetic and social self-consciousness that seeks to alter audience sensibilities. Their physical humor and movement are part of a dramatic text with other messages and goals. Bill Irwin is the best possible example of this new clown because he was trained as a circus performer, dancer, actor, and mime. In The Regard Evening, Irwin spoofs the avant-garde as well as the conventions of realism and variety theatre.

The Quebec-based Cirque du Soleil has found a way to use circus performances as a theatrical text playing on the inherent dramatic content in feats that defy gravity and the limits of the human body, and it spawned imitators around the world. There is attention to every aesthetic detail everywhere from the dramatic lighting to costumes and sound and it all adds to overall dazzling effect it has on the audience.



The Storyteller

Telling the Community's Story

Storytelling is one of the origins of theatre and it contains all of the fundamental elements including a performer, an audience, characters, and narrative. Narration, acting, drumming, and song are all interwoven into a participatory form, and audience response can create improvised moments. Often stories begin with riddles posed to the children of the community as a teaching device. The legends tend to have morals and imply behavioral dictates. In Africa, storytelling is used for education of the young and entertainment for the community. The African storyteller is a talented impersonator who can portray all the characters, human and animal, through alterations in voice and body.

The stories belong to their communities and are passed on from one generation to the next with each one adding their own embellishments. Often community members interpret the story to act out particular passages or sing an appropriate song, and the audience can spontaneously enter the playing space to dance and sing and add to the performance. Griots, storytellers of West Africa, provided an oral history of their communities through their recitation of the epic heroic tales that can go on for hours; these sagas are filled with music and songs, praises for leaders and their ancestors, genealogies that connect the past to the present, and proverbs that ensure the continuity of cultural values.

In the Americas, the culture of the Native American cultures lives on today through oral stories told at pow-wows, over campfires, at any time. The power of stories is revered, and a storyteller holds an important place in all their cultures.

Personal Stories, Political Agendas

Spalding Grey often focused on political or social commentary while women claimed the solo stage for feminism. Female performers such as Karen Finley and Holly Hughes used shock value of nudity and sexual images to raise awareness of their political concerns; these performances would give way to explorations of class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality. Another prominent female performer is Rosanne Barr form the famous television show named after her.



Solo artists pierce through the nature of identity and social definitions of difference, self, and religious belief, sexual orientation, and others while bringing visibility to the concerns of disenfranchised groups around their environment and around the world. They challenge our minds and our thinking of how we view ourselves and others. Danny Hoch is another excellent example of a solo performer with personal expression with both a comedic and dramatic approach.




Solo performers have been know for imitating characters that they know or can relate to personally such the actor John Leguizamo who by himself did a show of upwards to thirty-nine characters from the Latin community. What all of these artists and many more have in common is their authorship of texts that require their presence on stage. The actor’s relationship to the individuals and experiences presented is an integral part of the entire experience of solo work, and unlike a play written as a monologue and dialogue, these personal performance pieces can’t be reproduced by another actor.

Works Cited

'Aerial high Bar Act- ALGERIA (Cirque du Soleil)'. 01 October 2006. Online video clip. Accessed on 26 October 2009. .

Cosser, Sandy. 'Traditional Forms of African Entertianment." Ezinearticles.com 06 November 2007. Accessed on 26 October 2009. .

Felner, Mira and Orenstein, Claudia. The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation. New York: Pearson Education, 2006.

"PSA" Danny Hoch (Def Poetry). 18 April 2003. Online video clip. Accessed on 26 October 2009. .

'Rosanne, the Candidates and the campaign.' 09 May 2008. Online video clip. Accessed on 26 october 2009.<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMgIrFV1p1s>.

'swimming to cambodia'. 15 December 2007. Online video clip. Accessed on 26 October 2009. .

Wilson, Jamie. 'The History of Storytelling." 2002. 26 October 2009.<http://www.essortment.com/all/historystorytel_tukm.htm>.