Where is Vaudeville?
In our experience, Vaudeville is more a state of mind than an actual place. We knew the term was used to describe turn-of-the-century stage shows featuring a variety of dance, song, humor, and magic, but we weren’t sure if there was a geographical origin to the name. Luckily, a quick visit to Yahoo!’s Vaudeville category helped clear things up. First stop: the American Vaudeville Museum, which offered brief biographical profiles of the era’s performers, but nothing much on the history and origin of the term. Then we headed over to Vaudeville Memories, a stunning collection of links to news, history, sound clips, movies, trivia, and much more. It includes both original essays and external links. We were impressed with the depth of information, but still, no clue to the etymology of Vaudeville. Undaunted, we continued to b
