Vaudeville refers to a form of popular theater which flourished in America between 1900 and the 1930's. Before the invention of movies and television, many theaters around the country presented vaudeville shows. Every small town had it's own vaudeville house, and performers would travel from one to the next throughout the year. Vaudevillians were skilled in juggling, magic, clowning, acrobatics, singing, mime, and tap dancing. The performers themselves molded these skills into original acts, using music, costuming, dialogue, and their own personalities to enhance the presentation.
In the 1990's, Vaudeville has again emerged as a popular form of live performance. Today there is a growing number of people, from amateurs to professionals, practicing the vaudeville arts. LAZER VAUDEVILLE is part of this trend, sometimes called New Vaudeville. LAZER VAUDEVILLE has added a twist by combining modern special effects such as lasers, fog, blacklight, and strobe with the traditional vaudeville arts to create an original theater show. The performers appear as different characters throughout the show and they perform a wide variety of skills including juggling, acrobatics, comedy, magic, rope spinning, escape art, and audience participation.
You will see some of the most difficult and unusual juggling in the world! Carter Brown performs incredible feats of dexterity with bicycle rims or "hoops" as they are called. At one point in the show he has ten of them simultaneously spinning around his body. This art has it's roots in the great hoop acts of vaudeville, but Carter Brown has updated and refined these skills to create a modern version unparalleled in the world today.
Juggling has had a place in the culture and traditions of many nations around the world. Even the Egyptian hieroglyphics show images of people tossing balls in juggling patterns. In Europe and Asia, juggling has had a very long and diverse history. Chinese jugglers have generally used fewer objects at one time, adding physical skills such as acrobatics and dance to increase the difficulty and artistry of their work. They even juggled with their feet - this is called antipodism.
Russian circus jugglers have specialized in large numbers of objects, keeping up to eleven rings airborne and passing even more between people. Jugglers from France, Germany, Switzerland, England, and other European countries combined these techniques with clowning and character work to make their performances more appealing to a larger public.
American jugglers have continued this trend, performing a wide variety of skills while striving for original forms of presentation. In LAZER VAUDEVILLE you will see the classical ball, club, and ring juggling, with a few surprises thrown in!
Lazer Vaudeville's Wizard Floats a Plasma Ball !There is no official "magician" in LAZER VAUDEVILLE, but magical illusions are woven into the show in many unexpected ways. Many of these moments occur in the blacklight routines. For example, the neon cowboy disappears into a pile of clothing at the end of his rope spinning act. The Wizard floats a crystal ball, levitates a monster, and various objects appear to move around the stage all by themselves.
Well, a magician's creed is that you never give away your secrets. In a show like LAZER VAUDEVILLE, it is sometimes hard to tell where the magic ends and the skill begins! So keep in mind that the only "real" magic is in that special connection between the audience and the performers. However, at the end of this study guide you will find more information about books and manuals which teach the art of magic.
You will see the NEON COWBOY performing many of the classical western rope spinning tricks, such as the Texas skip, the wedding bell, the double rope spin, and the giant fifty-foot wedding bell. These tricks are named for the shapes created by the ropes, which stand out very clearly in the blacklight.
Rope spinning is an art similar to juggling in that it involves a lot of manual dexterity. The more hours one practices, the better one becomes. The ropes are made of cotton so that they are flexible enough to spin properly. At the end of this guide you will find information about a book called "Rope Tricks" by Frank Dean. Complete with photos of Will Rogers, the great American rope spinner, the book also teaches you how to make and manipulate your own spinning rope!
The performers in LAZER VAUDEVILLE combine comedy with physical skills such as clowning, slapstick, and character work. Rather than simply telling a joke, the comedy arises from unexpected situations and spontaneous interactions with the audience. Improvisation has always been an important part of vaudeville. The performers must turn awkward situations into comedy, bringing out the humor of a fumble or a confused volunteer.
Comedy always looks like something you could just go out and do, but it actually takes as much thought, planning, and rehearsal as the rest of the show. Physical comedy often revolves around an everyday situation gone wrong, when more than one person is involved, there is usually a silly or mischievous character and a "straight man" or serious person working in opposition. In LAZER VAUDEVILLE, the acrobatic office routine is a good example of physical comedy. Alfonzo, the show's seven-foot tall, fluorescent, fire-breathing dragon, makes people laugh by talking directly to the audience in the style of stand-up comedy.
Note the differences between the old film comedians such as the Marx Brothers, The Three Stooges, Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin, and the modern stand-up comedians performing today. Though much can be learned from observing the timing and delivery of other performers, there is no substitute for a live audience and the process of gathering material from daily life when it comes to creating your own comedy routines.
Alfonzo The Dragon - Stand-up Comedian !
Many of the props and costumes you will see are covered in fluorescent, day-glo colors. These colors are bright under normal light but when we turn on the blacklights they glow in the darkness and become almost alive with color. Objects appear to float through the air by themselves. Props also move with a strobe, or trail effect, giving the illusion of one object multiplying in mid-air.
The colors on our props and costumes are created using special fluorescent paints and fabrics. The colors are brought to life in the dark by four foot long fluorescent tubes which put out an ultra-violet light. These tubes look almost black when unlit, hence the name "blacklight". When a blacklight is on, it is actually turning on and off at a speed too great for the human eye to detect. If an object in this light is moved rapidly, it disappears during the fraction of a second when the light is off, and re-appears when the light comes back on. This happens so fast that the human eye sees the object in several places at the same time. The result is a "trail" effect.
The laser pieces you will see in LAZER VAUDEVILLE are somewhat similar to the laser shows in planetarium or rock'n roll concerts. There are two types of laser numbers in the show: they are called "graphics" and "beams and scans". In graphics, you will see geometrical designs displayed on a large transparent screen called a "rear projection screen". The laser cannon sits at the back of the stage and projects the patterns onto the screen from behind. The patterns move in time to the rhythm of a futuristic piece of music. In the second type of laser number, beams and scans, the laser beams are illuminated by theatrical fog as they shoot out over the heads of the audience. When the images spread out they appear like a flat scanner, hence the name beams and scans.
What goes into making these images appear? How do we get the graphics to move so very fast? What is the difference between entertainment lasers and the kind used for surgical or military operations? Let's see if we can answer some of these questions. The main difference between our lasers and the kind the military uses to blow things up lies in the level of electrical power, and in the type of gas used in the laser itself. Laser power is measured in watts. Here is how several lasers add up in terms of power wattage:
0000.0049 watts-Lazer Vaudeville laser
0025.0000 watts-Seaworld, or Disney outdoor laser
2500.0000 watts-Machine shop metal cutting laser
The wattage on military lasers is top secret, but it's sure to be a very high power output. Because show lasers are so low powered, and therefore very safe, the beams can only be seen through fog. Lazer Vaudeville's lasers are produced by a gas inside a tube; the gas is helium-neon. Higher powered lasers are produced with a krypton or an argon gas. Lasers were first invented as a means of transporting energy, so even though the wattage might be lower than a common light bulb, the condensation of the light makes lasers much more powerful!The graphic patterns are made by a computer controlling two mirrors which reflect the laser beam. The first mirror makes the beam move up and down, the second mirror makes the laser move side to side. These mirrors are mounted on small motors, which control the movement. A computer controls the motors and determines the speed and position of the two mirrors, and this creates the different patterns. The computer also synchronizes the lasers to the music, but each song is timed out and programmed by a laser technician.The correct spelling of laser is L.A.S.E.R., but Lazer Vaudeville spells it "lazer" for the show-biz effect!
BRIAN DUBE PROPMAKER/PUBLISHER
520 Broadway, 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10012
212-941-0060
DELL'ARTE SCHOOL OF PHYSICAL THEATRE
P.O. Box 816 Blue Lake, CA 95525-0816
707-668-5663
INTERNATIONAL JUGGLER'S ASSOCIATION
P.O. Box 122 Montague, MA
(413)367-2401
MAGIC, INC.
5082 Lincoln Ave., Chicago, IL 60625
312-334-2855
RINGLING BROS. CLOWN COLLEGE
Venice, FL 1 800 755-9637
CIRQUE DU SOLEIL, 1217 Notre Dame Est.
Montreal, P.Q. Canada H2L 2R3
514-522-2314