Vaudeville was America's dominant entertainment form from the mid 19th century up to (barely) the Second World War. An early precursor was minstrelsy, in which white performers "blacked up" (by rubbing burnt cork all over their faces), and offered caricatures of Blacks onstage, complete with white versions of Black songs and dances. Individual venues could be found centered around a city's Rialto (the entertainment district); alternatively, a whole road circuit existed, in which vaudeville shows could play on a tour which followed the whistle-stop towns of the nation's railways and roadways.

The seeming hodge-podge of dancers, singers, acrobats, dog trainers, comedians and tragedians that made up the motley crew of vaudevillians actually all participated in a finely-tuned nightly schedule which provided crafted dramatic highs and lows within each program. The evening would begin and end with pieces that allowed for audience traffic and noise: first up would be a "dumb show," which would then be followed by a number of comedic skits and musical ventures. When necessary, performers would stand downstage of the curtain to allow the crew to set the more complex set units behind the curtain, in preparation for big musical numbers or melodramatic scenarios. The first half of the show would close, perhaps, with a tragedian offering a sampling of a 'legit' play, as in a monologue from King Lear (Mark Twain mocks this sort of reading with the characters of the Duke and Dauphin in "Huckleberry Finn") followed by the curtain-closing act. The real headliner, however, was frequently a comic, who would appear just before the end of the second half.

Many later stars of film and TV got their start in vaudeville. Buster Keaton was literally bounced around the stage by his father, in the process earning then-phenomenal sums for the privilege. Keaton later evoked these rubbery renditions in his fantastical physical stunts in his famed silent movies. Other famous vaudeville alumni included Bob Hope, George Burns and Gracie Allen, and W.C. Fields. Other noted personalities, such as athlete Babe Ruth, got to enjoy their 15 minutes of vaudeville fame. Ultimately, film and radio, and then TV, dealt a deathblow to the form. Nowadays, there are some performers who lay claim to the title "New Vaudevillians" (all it takes is a unicycle and a dream& ). If you want to check outan on-line review of some sample NV's, check out the Blue Men Group (performing in Boston, Chicago, and New York), and you'll get an idea of how the performance tradition lives on. Web sites which list cultural events region by region will have more up-to-date listings for other such groups (try any of the main search engines for starters). Since such groups tend catch the eye of both print and web press, you're sure to find some local act that fits the bill.