Interview The Vaudevillian playwright Lloyd Brant explains pre-internet entertainment

Given its itinerant musicians and mashed-up performances, it's fitting that vaudeville's origins are somewhat murky. But whether it comes from the French "voix de ville" (voice of the city) or the Vau de Vire valley in the Normandy region, vaudeville and its storied history provide a rich backdrop for The Vaudevillian: Spirit Of The American Dream, which will be performed this weekend at the Southern Theater. Written by Lloyd Brant in collaboration with author Kevin Kling and performed by Brant's Theatre Of Fools, the piece was commissioned by the Southern as part of its 100-year celebration season. The A.V. Club caught up with Brant recently to discuss the salacious details surrounding the end of vaudeville and what modern-day equivalents could learn from it. (We’re looking at you, YouTube.)

The A.V. Club: What similarities do you see between entertainment culture today and during the age of vaudeville?

Lloyd Brant: Right now we're in a major transitional period in our history, and during the death of vaudeville, during the Great Depression, we were also in a transitional period. There are two main factors that killed vaudeville: One is radio. Radio changed the whole economics of live entertainment, where you could stay in your home and have famous vaudevillians of the day come right into your living room—Edgar Bergen, Charlie McCarthy [Bergen's ventriloquist's dummy], Bing Crosby, Jack Benny. All these famous vaudevillians came right into your home, so why go to the theater? So there are parallels there with the Internet and DVDs and iPods.

And it was also right at the time when talking pictures came into being, and [at that time] movie studios had to own their own movie theaters. Paramount [Pictures] owned Paramount theaters. Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the Kennedy family, had an affair going with Gloria Swanson—this story is told in the show—and so he built his own movie studio to make her pictures. And the big-time vaudeville was the Keith-Orpheum circuit. We have the Orpheum theaters here, one in downtown Saint Paul and one in downtown Minneapolis. So [Kennedy] went in and bought interest in the Keith-Orpheum circuit, then once he had controlling interest he wired all the theaters for talking pictures and he partnered with radio pioneer RCA and it became Radio-Keith-Orpheum Pictures—RKO Pictures—and they made King Kong and Citizen Kane. So that was the final nail in the coffin of vaudeville.

AVC: Do you see parallels between a free-for-all like YouTube and things like traveling sideshows, where artists made entertainment the people wanted to see?

LB: People are becoming famous on YouTube. That's a fantastic democratization of the industry, and let's hope that big conglomerates like Google don't take over that great opportunity. For me, you just have to say yes to whatever the new opportunities are. And I would say vaudeville truly was a democratization of the American spirit and dream. ... One way [immigrants] achieved the American dream was by putting their act up on the vaudeville stage. Throughout the history of vaudeville, you had different waves of immigrants, and [they] were reflected in the vaudeville shows of the time. When it was the Germans, you had the Double Dutch act. When it was the Irish, you had the Irish comedy teams. It was entertainment for the common person; it wasn't Broadway where the ticket price was much higher. For a dime you could go in and see a full evening's entertainment.

AVC: How are you working different aspects of vaudeville into The Vaudevillian?

LB: What I'm trying to do with vaudeville is incorporate it into narrative. This is a play that I'm doing. Vaudeville was 10-minute routines, and if you were a magician you did magic and it was all about the trick, and if you were a juggler you did tricks. What I'm doing is approaching the technique of the variety arts as trying to properly use special effects in a movie, in the service of the narrative. It supports and enhances the narrative. I'm really trying to find a new direction with vaudeville, sort of like what Cirque du Soleil does with circus arts. Normally you see a bunch of tricks strung together, but Cirque du Soleil has a narrative all the way through and there's a continuity from the beginning to the end.