Chautauqua

Chautauqua (/ʃəˈtɔːkwə/ shə-TAW-kwə) is an adult education and social movement in the United States that peaked in popularity in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Chautauqua brought entertainment and culture for the whole community, with speakers, teachers, musicians, showmen, preachers, and specialists of the day.

[8][9] Such Chautauquas were generally built in an attractive semirural location a short distance outside an established town with good rail service.

By 1889 the magazine changed course radically and dropped the serials that were Chautauqua's required reading, expanding with articles on history, biography, travel, politics, and literature.

Contemporary publications regarded the magazine highly, and Mott writes, "its range of topics was indeed remarkable, and its list of contributors impressive".

[citation needed] The most prolific speaker (often booked in the same venues with three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan) was Russell Conwell, who delivered his famous "Acres of Diamonds" speech 5,000 times to audiences on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, which had this theme:[20] Get rich, young man, for money is power and power ought to be in the hands of good people.

In retrospect, Potter's impersonations are of special interest as examples of the kind of recycling or refertilization of inspiration that occurs throughout the history of the one-person show.

Although the movement was founded by Methodists, nondenominationalism was a Chautauqua principle from the beginning, and prominent Catholics like Catherine Doherty took part.

[citation needed] Early religious expression in Chautauqua was usually of a general nature, comparable to the later Moral Re-Armament movement.

Some were so religiously oriented that they were essentially church camps, while more secular Chautauquas resembled summer school and competed with vaudeville in theaters and circus tent shows with their animal acts and trapeze acrobats.

While Chautauqua had its roots in Sunday school and valued morality and education highly, vaudeville grew out of minstrel shows, variety acts, and crude humor, and so the two movements found themselves at odds.

[24][25] At the turn of the 20th century, vaudeville managers began a push for more "refinement", as well as a loosening of Victorian-era morals from the Chautauqua side.

Entertainers on the Chautauqua circuit such as Charles Ross Taggart, billed as "The Man From Vermont" and "The Old Country Fiddler", played violin, sang, performed ventriloquism and comedy, and told tall tales about life in rural New England.

Manifestos such as the "Populist Party Platform"[29] voiced disdain for political corruption and championed the plight of the common people in the face of the rich and powerful.

Other favorite political reform topics in Chautauqua lectures included temperance (even prohibition), women's suffrage, and child labor laws.

For example, during the 1936 season at the Chautauqua Institution, in anticipation of that year's presidential election, visitors heard addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Republican nominee Alf Landon, and two third-party candidates.

[30] A route taken by a troupe of Chautauqua entertainers, the May Valentine Opera Company, which presented Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado during its 1925 "Summer Season", began on March 26 in Abbeville, Louisiana, and ended on September 6 in Sidney, Montana.

[2] The Trouble with Girls, a 1969 film starring Elvis Presley, was based on the 1960 novel Chautauqua by Day Keene and Dwight Vincent Babcock.