Variety Shows
A variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is an entertainment made up of a variety of acts (hence the name), especially musical performances and sketch comedy, and normally introduced by a compère (master of ceremonies) or host. Other types of acts include magic, animal and circus acts, acrobatics, juggling and ventriloquism. The variety format made its way from Victorian era stage to radio to television. Variety shows were a staple of anglophone television from its early days (late 1940's) into the 1970s, and lasted into the 1980s. (And even further, when considering Saturday Night Live, for example, which is still currently active. (1975- )) In several parts of the world, variety TV remains popular and widespread.
-Wikipedia definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variety_show
Music Hall
Music hall is a type of British theatrical entertainment popular between 1850 and 1960. It involved a mixture of popular songs, comedy,speciality acts and variety entertainment. The term is derived from a type of theatre or venue in which such entertainment took place. British music hall was similar to American vaudeville, featuring rousing songs and comic acts, while in the United Kingdom the term "vaudeville"' referred to more working-class types of entertainment that would have been termed "burlesque" in America.
Originating in saloon bars within public houses during the 1830s, music hall entertainment became increasingly popular with audiences, so much so, that during the 1850s, the public houses were demolished and music hall theatres developed in their place. These theatres were designed chiefly so people could consume food and alcohol and smoke tobacco in the auditorium while the entertainment took place. This differed somewhat from the conventional type of theatre, which until then seated the audience in stalls with a separate bar-room. Early music halls included the Canterbury Music Hall in Lambeth and The Middlesex, in Drury Lane, otherwise known as the Old Mo.
- Wikipedia defintion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_hall
Vaudeville
Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment. It was especially popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. A typical vaudeville performance is 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, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, andmovies. 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 burlesque. Called "the heart of American show business," vaudeville was one of the most popular types of entertainment in North America for several decades.
- Wikipedia definition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaudeville
Famous acts
This link shows a mixture of famous variety acts: http://www.ibmring21.org/varietyartists.html
-Foster Brooks (May 11, 1912 – December 20, 2001) was an American actor and comedian most famous for his portrayal of a lovable drunken man in nightclub performances and television programs.
Here is one of his sketches as a Drunk Airline Pilot
-Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew Lehrer (born April 9, 1928) is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, and mathematician. He is best known for the pithy, humorous songs he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s.
His work often parodies popular song forms, though he usually creates original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is "The Elements", where he sets the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the "Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan'sPirates of Penzance. Lehrer's early work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs dealing with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was.
Poisoning pigeons in the park
Famous Variety Venues
London Palladium-The London Palladium is a 2,286 seat West End theatre located off Oxford Street in the City of Westminster. From the roster of stars who have played there and many televised performances, it is arguably the most famous theatre in Londonand the United Kingdom, especially for musical variety shows. The theatre has also hosted the Royal Variety Performance more than any other theatre, most recently in 2013.
(Taken from the website)
-HISTORY
The London Palladium opened on Boxing Day 1910 with the first ‘grand variety bill’ featuring acts as diverse as Nellie Wallace and classical actor Martin Harvey.
Venues
There have been a total of 17 theatres that have staged the 81 Royal Variety Performances, and the 1912 Royal Command Performance. Out of the total of 82 shows, 75 have been in London theatres and seven in other cities and towns.
| Theatre | No. | Years | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| London Palladium | 39 | 1930–1937, 1946–1948, 1950, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1962, 1964–1978, 1980, 1987–1990, 2008, 2010, 2013 | |
| London Coliseum | 10 | 1919, 1923, 1928, 1938, 1945, 1949, 1953, 1958, 2004, 2006 | |
| Theatre Royal, Drury Lane | 7 | 1979, 1981–1983, 1985–1986, 1991 | |
| Dominion Theatre | 7 | 1992–1996, 2000–2001 | |
| Victoria Palace Theatre | 6 | 1927, 1951, 1955, 1960, 1984, 1997 | |
| Hippodrome, London | 2 | 1921–1922 | |
| Alhambra Theatre | 2 | 1925–1926 | |
| Opera House Theatre, Blackpool | 2 | 1955, 2009 | |
| Prince of Wales Theatre | 2 | 1961, 1963 | |
| Palace Theatre, London | 1 | 1912 | |
| Palace Theatre, Manchester | 1 | 1959 | |
| Lyceum Theatre | 1 | 1998 | |
| Birmingham Hippodrome | 1 | 1999 | |
| Hammersmith Apollo | 1 | 2002 | |
| Edinburgh Festival Theatre | 1 | 2003 | |
| Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff | 1 | 2005 | |
| Liverpool Empire Theatre | 1 | 2007 | |
| The Lowry, Salford Quays, Salford | 1 | 2011 | |
| Royal Albert Hall | 1 | 2012 | 100th Anniversary |
2. Two types of variety acts that i could see myself perform
Comedy song
- The same as regular singing but the lyrics are written to make the audience laugh, some artists make it humourous for example by the way they dress, their persona, the voice they use, facial expressions or the movements they make.
(more commonly known as Novelty Songs - apparently)
-A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s.
-A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s.
Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" has little music and is set to a rhythm tapped out on a snare drum and tambourine. One novelty song, a remix of "Axel F" by Crazy Frog, started as a mobile phone ringtone.
Comedy sketch
- A scene/scenario that an actor/ group of actors comes up with that is written in order to make the audience laugh, these are very popular for variety shows/ talent shows as they are normally quite short and are very successful in making people laugh if done correctly.A sketch comedy comprises a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as radio and television. Often sketches are first improvised by the actors and written down based on the outcome of these improv sessions; however, such improvisation is not necessarily involved in sketch comedy.
An individual comedy sketch is a brief scene or vignette of the type formerly used in vaudeville, and now used widely in comedy and variety shows, talk shows and some children's television series (such as Sesame Street).
Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their product from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character or situation.
(I have looked into comedy sketches in a separate post)
(I have looked into comedy sketches in a separate post)
I chose these two particular acts because personally i find them the funniest and for me a good variety act should make the audience laugh.
I looked into various comedy sketches from some of my favourite comedians, for example, Rowan Atkinson.
I feel that this sketch was particularly funny because he is referencing to something that as an English person i can relate to it and because i couldn't see the '9 drunk English people' he was talking about when he describes what they were doing i think it almost made it funnier because i had to imagine it.
I chose this as one of my two acts because I am very interested in stand-up comedy, for example, 'Live at the Apollo' & 'Mock the Week' and comedy talk shows, for example, 'Russell Howard's Good news'. I have always been interested in how they can, so quickly think off the top of their heads such funny material, for example in 'Mock the Week' one of the rounds is they get a certain subject and one by one they have to say something funny about that subject and they take a second to think of something then straight away start off a story. I personally think it's amazing.
I'm interested in doing a comedy song because I enjoy listening to parody's of songs, especially joke versions of serious songs, for example, 'trapped in the drive-thru' by Al Yankovic is a parody of 'trapped in the closet' by R.Kelly.
Doing a comedy song is my top choice because a few of my favourite artists do comedy songs for example Tim Minchin, Loretta Maine and Al Yankovic.
Loretta Maine and Tim Minchin's acts are very different to Al Yankovic because Maine and Minchin write all their own songs and also add their own musical ability, for Minchin it's piano and Maine it's guitar whereas Al Yankovic mainly does parodies of well known songs and does his own comedy music videos and puts them on youtube, for example he has made a parody version of Michael Jackson's 'Bad' called 'Fat' where him and backing dancers wear fat suits and describe the troubles of being Fat in a type of gang war theme.
