The art form was made up of supershort segments arranged in a slapdash manner, combining music and sensational images, often with simplistic humor and infantile scenarios. By that definition, no matter what moralists say, music videos differ little from vaudeville, except that the clothes have changed. So it’s only natural that Laura Cohen and Christopher Ellis are trying to tie in the old with the new in their weekly “Vaudeville Nights” showcase at the Mary-Arrchie Theatre.
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“Our idea is not to resurrect vaudeville from the ashes as in some sick nostalgic fantasy, but to work within the structures of vaudeville to create a new theatrical experience,” Ellis says. “This is not a museum piece or, worse, Disney. We shouldn’t forget that 60 years have passed since then.”
Earlier this year Cohen and Ellis put out the call to a range of theater and dance companies. “We sent out hundreds of submission forms,” Cohen says. “We also put up really pretty posters in theaters and performance spaces and places where performers hang out, asking for acts to participate.” At first they were afraid that people wouldn’t take them seriously. “At the bottom of the posters we had to put ‘This is not a joke.’”
