Name: A Night of Irish Vaudeville
Start: 2024-09-25T19:30:00-04:00
Location: 991 5th Ave, New York, NY, United States, New York 10028

Opera on Tap will perform “A Night of Irish Vaudeville,” bringing together Irish and American music and culture for an evening of classic nineteenth century fun. The performers are: Katherine Doe Morse, Blake Austin Brooks, Sarah Baumgarten, Heather Jones, Samantha Nahra, and Caitlin McKechney.
Vaudeville was a form of variety theater that was extremely widespread in the United States in the late 19th century, remaining one of the most popular forms of entertainment until it was overtaken by film in the 1930s. Vaudeville shows included many types of performances, such as singing, dancing, comedy acts, and short plays. Comedy acts often utilized ethnic stereotypes, with Irish people frequently targeted and characterized as disorderly drunks and defiant maids.
With the movement of Irish immigrants from the lower to middle and upper classes, as well as into the vaudeville industry, resistance to these stereotypes grew and the narrative began to shift. Shows were protested, such as the Russell Brothers’ act “The Irish Servant Girls,” which originated in the 1870s and featured the brothers in red wigs and dresses, flashing their underwear to the audience. The “Irish Colleen” emerged as a counternarrative to the “Bridget” maid stereotype, characterizing Irish women as demure, beautiful, and self-sacrificing rather than masculine, ape-like, and disobedient. Irish-Americans turned their hostile immigrant experience into comedy, and though vaudeville theater achieved social mobility.
Opera on Tap hopes to promote opera as a viable, living and progressive art form and to support the developing artists who continue to keep the art form alive.