TENT THEATRE HISTORY

"Reportoire tent shows, which began traveling America in the last half of the 19th century and continued well into the 20th, brought summer entertainment to thousands of small towns in all parts of the country. From 1900 to 1920 tent shows increased in number to form a rather sizable industry. Development was interwoven with many of the popular amusements of the early century until, carrying traits and the scars of such diversions as the circus, moving pictures, vaudeville, Chautauqua, and touring opera house companies, the repertoire tent show emerged as a distinct form of rural theatrics...With the emergence of hundreds of shows throughout this period, a rural audience, formerly remote from staged dramas, was created. Plays were written to satisfy this new body of theatre-goers; and special emphasis was placed on certain popular themes relating to the small town and the farm...The use of the canvas portable theatre by repertoire troupes that had customarily performed indoors created a distinct type of show business which by 1920 had become well established...(Theatre in a Tent, W.L. Slout, 1972)."

"All across the country, traveling companies of actors came to a town once a year, erected a huge tent on a vacant lot somewhere and presented a new and different play each and every night...The 'legitimate' theater looked down its nose at this kind of entertainment and few indeed were the Broadway actors who would even admit they learned their trade in the tents. But in the decade before the Great Depression tent repertoire...not only was the lustiest but the most robust branch of American theater. Writing for The New York Times in 1927, Don Carle Gillette, editor of the show business trade paper Billboard, declared that 'the canvas playhouses of the country now constitute a more extensive business than Broadway and all the rest of the legitimate theater industry put together'...When hard times hit after 1930, these shows quickly disappeared from the scene. The better companies kept operating for a time, but with the Great Depression there also came the talking picture and, soon thereafter, air conditioning...One by the tent shows dropped by the wayside. Those that the Depression did not get, World War II did (The Fabulous Toby & Me, Neil Schaffner, 1968)."

To experience a true adventure in tent theatre history visit The Theatre Museum of Repertoire Americana in Mt. Pleasant, Iowa which houses a unique collection of memorabilia from early American popular entertainment dating from the 1850s. Theatre Museum of Repertoire Americana