American Variety Stage at the Library of Congress

American Variety Stage at the Library of Congress.

These scanned, typed and in cases dogeared working scripts of early 20th C vaudevillian play-lets constitute a vast technical resource. Available in both English and Yiddish.

Here you will find, in shopworn scenario after hackneyed comical twist, the foundation for the ascendant 20th century art practice which found such fertile ground in young North America: The Entertainment Industry.

I think it would be a mistake to try to enjoy them on a level beyond what they ask of their audience. As in other cases of resources here, one will find, in nascent seed, so many of the techniques that inform the blockbuster and the situation comedy, of our two most developed forms of art. As no hack is totally without joy, so much of this material is ripe for mining.

Major rhetorical tools at work: *the gag* *the sight gag* *clowning* *slang (vernacular)* *stock character* *the misunderstanding.*

The stage descriptions--granted, to our eyes, different, inasmuch as they are ripped from time and context--appear from so very far across the gulf of years as particularly, ingeniously serviceable. A chair and a box is all one needs to arrange the fixtures of a home, an office, a fancy restaurant. Practical, resourceful, minimalist . . . economical!