Theatrical and Circus Life or, Secrets of the Stage, Green-Room and Sawdust Arena

Before entering the menagerie let us look at the huge cannon standing here outside the dressing-tent. It looks like a ponderous affair, but investigation shows that it is made o...

Little Peggy, afterwards the famous Mistress Woffington, was down at the shores of Liffey drawing water for her mother, when Madame Violante, a rope-walker, met her, and taking...

George McManus, treasurer of the Grand Opera House, St. Louis, in addition to being a good story-teller, is as fond of a practical joke as he is of three meals a day. During the...

The night the Southern Hotel burned down in St. Louis, I was standing at the ladies' entrance when Kate Claxton, whose presence is now always regarded in a city as ominous of a...

The masher is a remarkable creature. He hovers everywhere, from the market-place to the meeting-house and from the promenade to the theatre. He is many-phased and many-faced, an...

Outside of the legitimate theatres there is a large variety of places of amusement--that is, they are called places of amusement, but the fumes of vile tobacco, the odor of stal...

To the outside world the player's life seems always bright--a rose-carpeted path with sunshine forever straying about the feet and breath of the sweetest gardens always in their...

A person can gain an idea of the extent of stage decorations and the possibility of scenic illusions in the old English theatre by reading a description of the theatre as it exi...

Nearly every man connected with the ring work of a circus is an acrobat of one kind or other. His ability may be limited to turning a single somersault, still he will be brought...

These same people who appear grotesque, and out of the pale of ordinary every-day existence on the stage, are nearly always the most unromantic and realistic-looking folks in th...

The variety stage is responsible for a great many theatrical "what-is-its." A few years ago there was not so much variety to the variety business; the projectors of mastodon and...

At seven o'clock one morning during the season of 1881-2 a tall, gawky, angular-looking young man in a suit of smutty and wrinkled gray, under a battered slouch hat with a bandi...

My first experiences behind the scenes were in a small, dark cellar, owned by a man who is now a member of the Missouri Legislature, and where daily and nightly a select company...

The patrons of the theatre must all find their way into the house through the front doors; only the privileged few are allowed access to the mysteries and wonders of the stage t...

The one great wish of the small boy's heart, as he stands at a respectful distance from the ticket wagon watching the huge canvas rise and sink--apparently with as much ease as...

The idea of negro minstrelsy in its present shape originated forty years ago with Dan Emmett, Frank Brower, Billy Whitlock and Dick Pelham. This happy quartette organized the Vi...

Ferdinand Palmo, who died in New York in September, 1869, as poor as the proverbial church mouse, was the father of Italian opera in this country. He was born in Naples in 1785...

There are people who patronize the theatre who do not go there simply to see the play or to be pleased by the players, and whose interest in the stage is more than double discou...

When the seeker after histrionic honors has at last crossed the threshold of the stage, he or she will find it entirely different from the glitter and glory with which the imagi...

Some very queer things happen behind the scenes, and even on the stage in full view of the audience--occurrences that often mar the pleasure of the play for the people in the au...

All who have heard Prof. Kennedy or Val Vose with their funny little figures have wondered how they managed to produce such an effect upon their audience--to completely delude t...

About a week before the date of the opening of a spectacular play at any metropolitan theatre an advertisement reading something like this appears in the want columns of the dai...

The merchant who has anything to dispose of advertises it, and the most successful men in any line of business are those who are most liberal in the use of printers' ink. The th...

The black art, as the art of magic is termed, has arrived at a degree of perfection that is amazing. The magicians of the Orient for a long time were held up as superior to any...

"Well, now, I don't think that's so awful hard," said a fellow knight of the pencil, one evening as we both leaned upon the rear row of chairs in the old Theatre Comique at St....

A few companies have done away entirely with the canvas-outlined turkey and the sawdust-stuffed dumpling, and have meals that figure in the play served on the stage piping hot f...

The green-room, except where stock companies prevail--and there are not more than three or four in the United States now--has passed out of the shadow of the rigorous rules that...

The benevolent and protective order of Elks is a mystic organization whose membership is made up almost entirely of theatrical people, newspaper men, and people who have some cl...

The close of a theatrical season, which rarely exceeds forty weeks, and which terminates in the month of June, is always hailed by the prosperous actor as an occasion when he ca...

There is a great deal of romance in the life of a circus performer; and as the theatrical world is often penetrated in search of subjects rich in fiction, so, too, romancers ent...

This advertisement appeared in a St. Louis Sunday morning paper. The number and the street are not given for reasons that will at once present themselves to every intelligent re...

Anybody can get into the auditorium of a theatre by paying an admission fee reaching from twenty-five cents up to $1.50, and the sawdust precincts of the circus may be penetrate...

I have already written about the property-man, his many duties, and the great responsibility that rests upon him. I have also written about the prompter, and the vast amount of...

The Indian box-and-basket trick was for a long time a mystery even among magicians, and now it puzzles astute people to understand how the young man or young woman who has been...

If the Chinese must go they will have to close up the large theatres in San Francisco owned and controlled by Celestial managers. In these temples of the almond-eyed Thespis ext...

One of the great features of all travelling tent-shows and, indeed, in the long years a very prominent feature of the legitimate show when juggling, tumbling and things of that...

I was in the office of the old _Evening Post_, at St. Louis one afternoon in 1879, when it was invaded by Capt. M. Y. Bates and wife, the tallest married couple in the world. Th...

If some of the old Greek dramatists could shake together their ashes and assume life, they would open their ancient eyes to look upon the beauty, comfort, and charming symmetry...

In the spring the gorgeous banners float upon the circus tent, And the active agents' fancies on "advances" all are bent. In the spring the "bounding brothers" try some new and...

There are two kinds of clowns familiar to people who patronize amusements--the clown who juggles old jokes in the circus ring, and the clown whose only language is that of facia...

Mr. Troubadour Ambleleg was a tenor. He waved his light voice for a light salary in the chorus of an unexpensive opera company that made the summer months of 1881 and the opera...

An interview with an old stager was published a few months ago in the New York _Dramatic News_, which furnishes some new ideas about John Wilkes Booth, brother of the illustriou...

Good-natured, rosy-cheeked, cheerful little Davy Garrick, as Dr. Johnson called the tragedian, was in the zenith of his glory at the Drury Lane, London, about the middle of the...

Theatrical life is full enough of business and bustle, even when a company is playing a long engagement in a large city; but when "on the road," travelling from town to town--pl...

In no other country in the world does the interviewer's profession thrive as in these United States. From the cabinet minister--nay, the President himself--down to the common fe...

Zazel Shot out of a Cannon--The Zulus--Gen. Tom Thumb and Wife --Thumb and Campanini--Hugged and Kissed by an Ape--Millie Christine the Famous Two-Headed Lady--The Eighth Wonder...

Rude Carts as Primitive Stages--Followed by Stone Theatres with Pits for Stages--Theatres of the Elizabethan Period-- Sunday Theatres in the "Golden Age"--Description of the Glo...

Front Door and Back Door Entrances--"Mashers" at the "Stage-Door" --The Cerberus who Stands Guard--Perquisites Paid to Him-- Bulkhead and the Ballet Girls--The Tricks of the Sce...

A PRELIMINARY PEEP. PAGES Admission Fees--Cerberus at the Back Door--The Awe-Stricken Stranger behind the Scene--Swarms of Actors and Employees-- Description of Stage Settings--...

Davy Garrick at Drury Lane, London--English Actors sail for America--Voyage in the Charming Sally in 1752--The First American Theatre--The First Programme--The First New York Th...

The Street Arabs and Lotta--The Stage at the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century--Little "Accidents" of Bernhardt and Indiscretions of Patti--"Sudden Johnnie" and Colombier-- Li...

Mrs. Bellamy and Mr. St. Leger in Dublin--Rousseau's Description of Paris Opera--Modern Mechanism--Producing Steam, Fire, Thunder, Lightning, etc.--Olive Logan and her Jewels--S...

The Young Man from Cahokia--The Box of Gags--Stage Struck Girls of Louisville--The College Graduate from Illinois--"The Warrior Bowed His Crested Head"--The "N. G." Curtain--Mar...

A First-Class Puff in a Leadville Paper--All Anxious to Appear in Print--Various Ways of Puffing--Sending Photos--Diamond Robberies--Falling Heir to a Fortune, etc.--Minnie Palm...

Actors who Memorize whole Newspapers--Lovely Peggy--Kean Dying as he Played--Sol. Smith's Funny Adventure--A Masher made Serviceable--Charlotte Cushman and the Colored Bell-Boy...

Ambleleg--His Soul Full of Art and Throat Full of Music--Miss Justaytine the Pink of Beauty and Perfection of Belleship--The Chorus Singer Mashed on the Maiden--The Mash Mutual-...

Palmo, the Father of Italian Opera in America--Interview with Col. Mapleson--The Cost of Rigging a Company--What it Costs Every Time the Curtain is Rung Up--Mme. Grisi's Superst...

Mistress Woffington--Children as Actors and Actresses--Little Corinne--Debut of Emma Livry--Nell Gwynne the Fish Girl-- Lola Montez, the Pretty Irish Girl--Adah Isaacs Menken as...

Sword Swallowers--Jugglers in America, Europe, China, and Hindoostan--Herman Sells the Barbers--Herman Sold by the "Boys"--Wonderful Chinese Jugglers--How Ladies are Suspended i...

Gunakophagists or Woman-Eaters--Corner Loafers--Mashers of the Profession--Female Mashers--The Blonde Beauties of the Leg Drama--Model Letter--Lillian Russell's Escapades--"Patt...

Emmet, Brower, Whitlock and Pelham among the Earliest--Pot-Pie Herbert--Daddy Rice and Jim Crow--Zip Coon--Coal Black Rose --My Long Tail Blue--Early Days of George Christy--Min...

Prof. Kennedy and Val Vose--Louis Brabant _Valet de Chambre_ to Francis I. Wins Wife and Fortune through his Wonderful Gift--M. St. Gille and his Wonderful Exploits--Alexandre a...

Who the "Elks" are--Jughandle's Friend Wants to be an Elk-- Getting the Candidate Ready--The High Muck-a-Muck--The Peculiar Circle--The Descent--The Path of Progress--The Upward...

Goodwin's "Make-up" for Hobbies--Booth and Company Playing "Hamlet" in Street Costume--Dressing-Rooms of Old-Time and Present Theatres--Louis Harrison Spoils a Play at San Franc...

People who Patronize the Theatre--The Young Blood--Members of the "Profesh"--The Giddy and Gushing Usher--The Bouncer-- The Peanut Cruncher--The People who go out "Between Acts"...

Broken Down or "Crushed" Actors as Door-Keepers--The Treasurer of the Theatre--The Usher--Orchestra and Leader--Stage Manager --The Scenic Artist--The Stage Carpenter, Supes and...

All Performers must Meet the Interviewing Fiend--How the Interviewer is Received by Patti, Nilsson, Gerster, Kellogg, Cary, Hauk, Abbott, Bernhardt, Morris, Modjeska, Neilson, A...

The Disengaged Canvasman's Poetry--Circus Posters--The Grand Parade--The $25,000 Beauty--Twelve Ponies and Forty Horses on a Rampage--Henry Clay Scott and his Aged Father--Sold...

Burning of the Southern Hotel and Kate Claxton's Presence-- Superstitions of John McCullough, Raymond, Joe Jefferson, Sothern, Florence, Booth, Chanfrau, Byron, Thorne, Neilson,...

The Stage Prompter and His Duties--Actors who "Stick" and some who "Never Stick"--A Popular Actress and her Useful Husband --The Firemen's Amours--Mary Anderson and Her Chewing-...

Interviewing Sig. J. F. Cardella--The French School Theatre La Scala--Amount of Practice Required--The American Ballet-- Salaries of Premieres, Coryphees, etc.--The Time Require...

The Small Boy and the Circus--Beating the Show--Slack Wire and Balloon Performances--Donaldson's Ill-Fated Trip--Frightful Accident in Mexico--Circus Green-Room and Dressing-Roo...