Older theatre programs can illuminate steps on theatre’s progression to a “respectable” entertainment form. This program from Weber and Fields’ Music Hall is from February 1903, for one of the last performances of their hit vaudeville show, Twirly-Whirly. This music hall program reflects a potentially “lower-brow” audience, not necessarily the “higher class” of patron Frank V. Strauss would later promise advertisers. 

Advertisements can give researchers perspective onto the perceived interest of theatre goers for different types of performances- the ads in this Vaudeville program are primarily for cigarettes, liquor and other popular entertainments. 

Of particular interest is the ad for John W. Fletcher, a clairvoyant and palmist. The ad, which features a detailed drawing of famous actress Sarah Bernhardt’s hand, gives an interesting look into the career of a controversial spiritualist (or huckster, depending on who you’d ask), who is recorded in some settings as having died of a heart attack during a police raid, but in contemporary sources was said to have taken his own life with secreted poison capsules.

(credit: American Theatre Architecture Archive, Theatre Historical Society of America)