Writing for Vaudeville

Can a gift for vaudeville be taught—or only sharpened by listening to those who know the stage? Brett Page opens with that question, then traces vaudeville’s ancestry to a French workman whose sprightly songs set a whole country singing.

In 1915, vaudeville is a changing American entertainment, descended from French songs and transformed by variety acts, clean family houses, and the rise of continuous shows. Drawing on his own professional experience and the counsel of performers and writers, Page asks what makes an act work—and what its writer must understand about audiences, performers, and the stage. A bill may be a jumble of unrelated turns; making each one land is no accident. What must a writer know before the curtain rises?

With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world.

Who are we? We're Cairn Press. Our background is in design, publishing, typography, and technology. These skills fuel our mission to create the highest quality Public Domain eBooks available online, at an affordable price. We give them the treatment they deserve; our proprietary process restores books for a better overall user experience in design, readability, and e-reader compatibility.