The following outline provides an overview of and topical guide to entertainment and the entertainment industry:
Entertainment is any activity which provides a diversion or permits people to amuse themselves in their leisure time, and may also provide fun, enjoyment, and laughter. People may create their own entertainment, such as when they spontaneously invent a game; participate actively in an activity they find entertaining, such as when they play sport as a hobby; or consume an entertainment product passively, such as when they attend a performance.
The entertainment industry (informally known as show business or show biz) is part of the tertiary sector of the economy and includes many sub-industries devoted to entertainment. However, the term is often used in the mass media to describe the mass media companies that control the distribution and manufacture of mass media entertainment. In the popular parlance, the term show biz in particular connotes the commercially popular performing arts, especially musical theatre, vaudeville, comedy, film, fun, and music. It applies to every aspect of entertainment including cinema, television, radio, theatre, and music.
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Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have developed over thousands of years specifically for the purpose of keeping an audience's attention.
Show business, sometimes shortened to show biz or showbiz, is a vernacular term for all aspects of the entertainment industry. From the business side, the term applies to the creative element and was in common usage throughout the 20th century, though the first known use in print dates from 1850. At that time and for several decades, it typically included an initial the. By the latter part of the century, it had acquired a slightly arcane quality associated with the era of variety, but the term is still in active use. In modern entertainment industry, it is also associated with the fashion industry and acquiring intellectual property rights from the invested research in the entertainment business.
Vaudeville is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment which began in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, while changing over time.
Ventriloquism or ventriloquy, is a performance act of stagecraft in which a person creates the illusion that their voice is coming from elsewhere, usually through a puppet known as a "dummy". The act of ventriloquism is ventriloquizing, and the ability to do so is commonly called in English the ability to "throw" one's voice.
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting foolish, or employing prop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called a stand-up comedian.
Sugar Babies is a musical revue conceived by Ralph G. Allen and Harry Rigby, with music by Jimmy McHugh, lyrics by Dorothy Fields and Al Dubin and various others. The show is a tribute to the old burlesque era. First produced in 1979 on Broadway and running nearly three years, the revue attracted warm notices and was given subsequent touring productions.
William Mills Irwin is an American actor, clown, and comedian. He began as a vaudeville-style stage performer and has been noted for his contribution to the renaissance of American circus during the 1970s. He has made a number of appearances on film and television, and he won a Tony Award for his role in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He is also known as Mr. Noodle on the Sesame Street segment Elmo's World, and he appeared in the Sesame Street film short Does Air Move Things?. He has regularly appeared as Dr. Peter Lindstrom on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and had a recurring role as "The Dick & Jane Killer" on CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. From 2017 to 2019, he appeared as Cary Loudermilk on the FX television series Legion.
The Trocadero Theatre is a historic theater located in Chinatown in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It offered musical comedies, vaudeville, opera, and burlesque. The Trocadero Theatre was refurbished for use as an art house cinema and fine arts theatre in 1970s, and by the 1990s had become an iconic venue for rock and punk concerts.
Joseph Evans Brown was an American actor and comedian, remembered for his friendly screen persona, comic timing, and enormous elastic-mouth smile. He was one of the most popular American comedians in the 1930s and 1940s, with films like A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Earthworm Tractors (1936), and Alibi Ike (1935). In his later career Brown starred in Some Like It Hot (1959), as Osgood Fielding III, in which he utters the film's famous punchline "Well, nobody's perfect."
Anna Russell was an English–Canadian singer and comedian. She gave many concerts in which she sang and played comic musical sketches on the piano. Among her best-known works are her concert performances and famous recordings of The Ring of the Nibelungs – a humorous 22-minute synopsis of Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen – and her parody How to Write Your Own Gilbert and Sullivan Opera.
Richard Elfman is an American actor, musician, director, producer, screenwriter, journalist, author and magazine publisher.
Janeece "Jan" Adele was an Australian actress and entertainer active in many fields including circus, vaudeville, theatre, film and television. She was best known for her recurring comedy role of vaudevillian showgirl Trixie O'Toole in the 1970s television soap opera Number 96. usually sharing scenes with co-stars Wendy Blacklock and Mike Dorsey.
Theatre of Australia refers to the history of the live performing arts in Australia: performed, written or produced by Australians.
Performing arts – are art forms where the participant engages in a physical performance using their body, voice, language, or use of specific equipment for entertainment purposes.
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: In Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses which engender dramatic irony, which provokes laughter.
Schave & Reilly are a modern-day version of Vaudeville’s “baggypants comedians" who perform physical comedy. The duo is the husband and wife team of Ben Schave and Caitlin Reilly who have worked together over ten years. The pair collaborate to create original material, using the themes of love, relationship, sports, and the workplace to develop their shows. Schave & Reilly are based in Austin, Texas. Trained at the schools of the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre and the University of Texas, the couple met while learning their physical comedy craft at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown College. Both performers were influenced by performers such as Charlie Chaplin and by Ray Bolger, the scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz. Bolger was a vaudevillian dance performer whose work in the movie was derived from his vaudeville act.”
Wanderlust Circus is a theatrical circus troupe based in Portland, Oregon, founded in 2006 by creative partners Noah Mickens and Nick "The Creature" Harbar. Since 2006, Wanderlust Circus has grown from a small band of creatives to a full-fledged circus troupe, and non-profit organization. The organization presently comprises a team of acrobats, a 10-piece swing band, a trick-roping cowboy clown; and several aerialists, contortionists, hand balancers, jugglers, and dancers. Their most popular recurring shows have been The White Album Christmas, A Circus Carol, and the dance party series MegaBounce.
The roots of modern stand-up comedy began in 1840s minstrel shows that perpetuated racist stereotypes in the United States. American vaudeville emerged around the same time and along with the later developed Chitlin' Circuit, produced the founders of this form of entertainment. Early stand-up comedians spoke directly to the audience as themselves without props or costumes, which distinguished these acts from vaudeville performances. These comics stood in front of the curtain during their shows, like early 20th century "front cloth" stand-up comics in Britain and Ireland whose numbers allowed the stage behind them to be re-set for another act.