Vermont Vaudeville

“I appreciate your work on so many levels.”

Rob Mermin, Founder of Circus Smirkus

It’s a variety show made up of many unrelated acts. These acts are usually funny, often spectacular, and always memorable. We’ve had people doing flips on pogo sticks, ballet dancers, singers, giant unicycles, jugglers, magicians, sword swallowing, mimes, storytellers, and just about everything in between. The show is tied together by our illustrious emcee.

One of Vermont Vaudeville’s goals is to create an event that leaves a lasting impression for people of all ages. To that end, our shows are community-oriented professional variety shows, we use old theaters that have great atmosphere, we have popcorn popping in the lobby, sometimes we have food trucks parked on the lawn, and the Vermont Vaudeville house band is playing when you enter the theater. It’s an experience.

“You remind us every time of the power and joy to be found in a collective theatrical experience.”

Joyce Mandeville, NEKarts Board of Directors

Stuck in Vermont did a great job of catching what we do in this video:

Since its start, vaudeville was more than an assembly of ragtime pantaloons, monologists, eccentric dancers, barrelhouse songbirds, ventriloquists, magicians, tumblers, and jugglers, more than a coast-to-coast network of once-gilded theaters now shambling into plaster dust. Vaudeville was a people’s culture.

For more on the history of vaudeville, start here:

A brief overview of the history of Vaudeville, excerpted from Vaudeville Old and New: An Encyclopedia of Variety Performances in America, by Frank Cullen, Florence Hackman, and Donald McNeilly.