Have as much variety as possible. Do not confine yourself exclusively to comic songs or to sentimental ditties alone. At all costs keep your audience cheerful and amused. Too much humor is apt to nauseate, but too much melancholy will certainly spell failure. Try to gauge the temper of your company, and if they seem to prefer the serious to the comic parts on your programme, or vice versâ, make as quick and effective an alteration as you can. They must be made to appreciate you—not simply to tolerate you.
To have a piano accompaniment is a distinct acquisition if the voices be of doubtful merit. For accomplished singers a banjo is quite sufficient, but the amateur will certainly find that a friend at the piano is very handy and reliable. This is, of course, entirely a matter of individual taste and circumstances.
A very good selection of nigger dialogues, speeches, &c., can be obtained from any theatrical publisher. The entertainer will be furnished with useful ideas for a programme, including some of the most successful minstrels’ songs and drolleries.
As the Stump Orator would say, “We must now draw a delusion to our not over long lecture,” feeling confident that the amateur nigger will find his entertainment as great a source of pleasure to himself as of amusement to the audience.
CHAPTER VIII
TABLEAUX VIVANTS
True-to-Life Representations
Tableaux may be divided into two important classes—the portrayal of abstract qualities, which usually includes motionless figures posed in sustained attitudes, and historic and romantic groups, in which the actor is allowed some occupation.
The Hero.