Talk:Tent show

What is a tent show?

Just reading this article, I get an idea of what it is, but I wish that a definition of "tent show" was included near the top of the article. How big the tent is, what shape is it, is everyone on the ground, are there multiple tents, etc. 05:10, 23 January 2025 (UTC) 71.7.174.105 (talk) 05:10, 23 January 2025 (UTC)

I was with The Schaffner Players in Iowa and Illinois in 1954. We played for 19 weeks, moving each week to a new town. We began with two weeks of rehearsals in Fairfield, Iowa. Each of the seven plays had been written by Neil "Toby" Schaeffner and were repeated each week in the same order in each town.

There was one huge tent that held several hundred people, mostly seated in wide rows of folding chairs with two big sets of bleacher-like seats at the back of the tent.

The stage was raised about 4 ft high at the other end of the tent and the set was shown all the time with no curtain hiding it. There were LOTS of posters festooned above the stage and on the sides of the tent which touted different local stores in each town. These were purchased by the business owners in each place as advertisements.

The whole setup, including a ticket booth, was taken down after the show on Sunday nights, packed into two (or three) trucks and driven to the next town to be set up again on Monday morning to be ready for that night's show.

I think you can Google photos! Enjoy!

Sonne5391& (talk) 20:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

Minstrelsy

An enormous number of tent shows from the 19th century at least into the 1930s centered on blackface minstrelsy, but that does not even seem to be mentioned in the article. - Jmabel | Talk 00:48, 7 July 2026 (UTC)