PUTNEY — Vaudeville lives!
The first-ever Putney Vaudeville is presented by Next Stage Arts Project in collaboration with Strong Coffee Stage on Friday, May 24, at 7:30 p.m. at Next Stage at 15 Kimball Hill.
The bill includes stellar professional acts and a rousing live band, as well as assorted friends and neighbors displaying skills that may surprise you. The show also will invite good-natured audience engagement. Beer and wine flow from a J.D. McCliment's Pub cash bar.
Putney Vaudeville is the brainchild of teacher/director Rebecca Waxman and musician Peter Siegel, who joined forces with Bronwyn Sims and Patrick Donnelly of Strong Coffee Stage in the hope of launching an ongoing showcase for old-time entertainment and community talent.
Strong Coffee Stage is a Brattleboro-based professional company dedicated to creating compelling theater for local and international audiences. Founded by Sims and Donnelly in 2009, Strong Coffee Stage combines movement, music, virtuosity, and humor to create innovative theatrical productions.
These four vaudeville enthusiasts contacted Next Stage Arts, an arts nonprofit dedicated to revitalizing Putney's cultural and economic village center, with a novel idea for entertainment.
“Next Stage's mission is to bring life to downtown Putney, of which I think they are doing a tremendous job,” Waxman says. “But our little group thought we could add to Next Stage's remarkable roster of shows. What isn't Next Stage doing that much of? We decided that spoken theater was the weakest link.”
Waxman says there have been some challenges with Next Stage's space that have tended not to support live theater.
“For instance, some of the sight lines are not the greatest. We are working to overcome these obstacles. Next Stage already has a resident theatrical company which is preparing for its first performances this summer. But our group wanted to try something different in staged performances and came up with the concept of vaudeville.”
When vaudeville reigned
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of entertainment popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was composed of a series of unrelated acts grouped on a bill.
Popular and classical musicians, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female and male impersonators, acrobats, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies all found a home on the vaudeville stage.
Waxman says that most people confuse vaudeville with what replaced it: burlesque. She says that while burlesque enjoys a surprising comeback as a form of live theater, purer vaudeville is more rare.
“Old-school vaudeville really was a family event aimed to have something to please everyone,” she says. “It was certainly not as raunchy or blue as burlesque can be.”
So, that said, don't expect strippers or lewd comedians.
Peter Siegel says the aim is not to imitate old vaudeville. Rather, he says, “we are using it as a forum to showcase high-end national talent, and to bring in local talent, some of which has never performed on stage before.”
Putney Vaudeville's acts will include circus arts, music and spoken word. Seven acts have confirmed.
The professional headliner is The Real McCoy, starring Brent McCoy, a renowned entertainer from Northern Vermont. McCoy, an internationally touring physical comedian, resembles a construction worker and combines breathtaking circus stunts with lightning-fast wit for a rollicking comic experience. With jaw-dropping technical skill and an amazing ability to connect with his audience, he has appeared at festivals, theaters, colleges, schools, and corporate events since 2005.
Complementing The Real McCoy is Steve Cornish, an up-and-coming performer from Maine, who will provide a variety of circus acts.
Music is provided by Putney Vaudeville's own house band, the versatile Gaslight Tinkers, a beloved local group of musicians led by Peter Siegel with Garrett Sawyer on bass and Zoe Darrow on fiddle. They are as well-versed in Afro-pop, funk and reggae as they are in Celtic fiddle and Tin Pan Alley tunes.
The Gaslight Tinkers will perform several sets, play between acts, and accompany other performers on stage. Siegel will also be performing solo.
Moreover, BUHS and NEYT alumnus Riley Goodemote, a beloved musician, will perform on various instruments.
The well-known Putney painter and illustrator Donald Saaf will be revealing hidden talents by playing Tin Pan Alley chestnuts.
And Addy Bateman, 10, of Dummerston, will sing “The Cup Song,” with a little help from his friends.
As vaudeville often included spoken-word acts, Harral Hamilton from Brattleboro is slated to perform his own comic monologue. There also will be an open mic, so get ready to tell a good joke.
Emcee is local celebrity Patrick Donnelly.
'A continuing event...'
“We really want Putney Vaudeville to be a continuing event,” says Waxman. “Our goal is to provide a platform of a lot of different kinds of material, both highbrow and lowbrow. That's what original vaudeville did. Groups like Burns and Allen worked their acts out in the vaudeville circuit. We want to have music, spoken words, comics, street performers, circus acts, jugglers, magic, and dance.
What about chicken jugglers?
“Who knows in the future? That's just the sort of act we're looking for. Putney Vaudeville will be a chance for people to show off their hidden skills, like your local bank teller who secretly plays the saw,” he said.
Waxman adds, “We dream of having a Putney Vaudeville seasonally, with perhaps our next show in the fall. If that proves popular enough, we may do one every month. We want to get everyone involved and have a real community party. People should come out of the woodwork to see our vaudeville, and maybe even envision this as their big chance to get into the act with their own hidden talents themselves.”