Burlesque
Comic travesty of serious theatre, later American variety built on striptease
Related
Burlesque began as nineteenth-century stage travesty: serious plays and operas were turned into comic song-and-dance, dismantled with cross-dressing, absurd costumes and puns.
Victorian London enjoyed short burlesques of Faust and similar works; in the 1860s British troupes such as Lydia Thompson's Blondes toured America, and the form mixed with variety, becoming adult entertainment built on striptease by the early twentieth century.
It is not only striptease: its root is parody. Compared with revue it depends on taking an original apart; compared with vaudeville, early burlesque kept a loose frame of a play. Unlike operetta, it rarely tells a complete romantic story.
Sources
- 滑稽歌舞秀的戏仿传统、英国巡演与美国脱衣舞转向，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Burlesque"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.