Vaudeville

Vaudeville (; French: [vodvil] ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1870s until the early 1930s. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian United Kingdom, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, mimes, illustrated songs, jugglers, athletes, lecturing celebrities, or scenes from plays, one-act plays, minstrels, and films. A vaudeville performer is often referred to as a vaudevillian. Vaudeville developed from many sources, including the concert saloon, minstrelsy, freak shows, dime museums, and literary American burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business", vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America, South America, Australia, and Europe for several decades.