Anna in the Tropics

My family and I went to see Anna in the Tropics was on a Sunday matinee. We arrived about forty five minutes before the show started, and we were let into the auditorium about thirty minutes to find our seat.  The auditorium seating was set up in a semicircle, and my family and I sat in the front row of the middle section. After observing the audiences I notice that most of the patrons were over sixty five years of age. The patrons were all talking among themselves about either personal issues or medical problems. The energy was high and filled with anticipation. When the show was over most of the audiences was talking about some of the risqué scenes in the show. For example there was a scene that the lights were out, and when they came on one of the male actor had his shirt off and the female actress have her blouse unbutton and he was lying on top of her kissing her. This and some of the other sexual references made myself and others in attendance uncomfortable. I was surprised about all the sexual content in the play and did not feel it added value to the story. Most of the audiences found the show entertaining. Some of the audiences felt that the actor and actress needed to use more facial expression. The audiences that usually go to a matinee performance are the elder and family with children. Therefore the actors might have to be more reserved. For example some of the language use might need to be tone down for a matinee. You can see and feel a difference how the audiences should behavior from a movie to a play. When you are at a movie the audiences is making noise, texting, talking to each other, and walking in and out of the movie, but during the live performance you first hear the rules on how you should behavior. For example no flash cameras, no cell phones, etc. These rules make make the theatre experience more enjoyable for everyone that attends. Since this theatre was small you might have came into the theatre strangers, but after the performance you all became friends. My wife, daughter, and I talk about the play on the drive home and we all agree it was entertaining, but we did talk about the scenes that were a bit risqué. Even though my daughter is almost eighteen, my wife and I felt uncomfortable.

 This is a picture of the play where the lector who is reading the story of Anna Karenina to the wroker in the cigar factory. 

Burlesque

Most people think that "burlesque" means female strippers walking a runway to a bump and grind beat. But that only fits the form in its declining years. At its best, burlesque was a rich source of music and comedy that kept America, audiences laughing from 1840 through the 1960s.

 Without question, however, burlesque's principal legacy as a cultural form was its establishment of patterns of gender representation that forever changed the role of the woman on the American stage and later influenced her role on the screen. . . The very sight of a female body not covered by the accepted costume of bourgeois respectability forcefully if playfully called attention to the entire question of the "place" of woman in American society (Allen-1991).

In the 19th Century, the term "burlesque" was applied to a wide range of comic plays, including non-musicals.

 Beginning in the 1840s, these works entertained the lower and middle classes in Great Britain and the United States by making fun of  operas, plays and social habits of the upper classes. These shows used comedy and music to challenge the established way of looking at things.

By the 1860s, British burlesque relied on the display of shapely, underdressed women to keep audiences interested.

   This picture is from U.S. Gilbert burlesque comedy,"Engaged" poster  in the Library of Congress year 1879. 

From the 1880s onwards, burlesque comedy was built around settings and situations familiar to lower and working class audiences. Courtrooms, street corners and inner city schoolrooms were favorites.

By 1905, burlesque theatre owners formed vaudeville-style circuits of small, medium and big time theatres. Because big time burlesque companies played these theatres in regular rotations, the circuits came to be known as wheels. Unlike vaudeville performers who sought weekly bookings as individual acts, burlesquers spent an entire forty week season touring as part of one complete troupe.  

In the 1920s, the old burlesque circuits closed down, leaving individual theater owners to get by as best they could on their own. The strip tease was introduced as a desperate bid to offer something that vaudeville, film and radio could not. 

Some sources praise the burlesque comics of the 1920s and 30s, but by this point, men went to burlesque shows to watch women strip. The more the gals took off, the more the audiences liked it.

By the 1960s, hard core pornography became readily available. Men no longer needed strippers to feed their fantasies.

In the early 2000s, new burlesque shows were cropping up on both sides of the Atlantic, featuring comics, strippers and specialty acts that offer a new spin on the old buresque mix.

 This book chronicles the history of burlesque

Back in the days  burlesque performers developed a unique backstage language of their own.

Jerk – audience member
Yock – a belly laugh
Skull – make a funny face
Talking woman – delivers lines in comedy skits
Cover – perform someone's scenes for them
The asbestos is down – the audience is ignoring the jokes
From hunger – a lousy performer
Mountaineer – a new comic, fresh from the Catskill resort circuit
Boston version – a cleaned-up routine
Blisters – a stripper's breasts
Cheeks – a stripper's backside
Gadget – a G-string
Trailer – the strut taken before a strip
Quiver – shake the bust
Shimmy – Shake the posterior
Bump – swing the hips forward
Grind – full circle swing of the pelvis
Milk it – get an audience to demand encores
Brush your teeth! - comedian's response to a Bronx cheer

                                                                    

Allen. Robert G. Horrible Prrettines:Burlesque and American Culture (Univ.of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1991), pp. 258-259

El-Droubie, Yak, and Parliament, Ian C. The Art of Tease. 1st ed. New York: Korero, 2009 176-178. Print.

"A Brief History of Burlesque." The Indepent. Theatre and Dance. web 25 March 2006