Booths

Booths, portable theatres which provided travelling companies with an adequate stage, supplanting the adapted innyards (see INNYARDS USED AS THEATRES), barns, or makeshift rooms which were at first the only places available for theatrical productions. Booths were probably first erected in the grounds which accommodated fairs in Britain and on the Continent, and consisted originally of tents housing a small stage on which were presented short sketches and drolls interspersed with juggling and rope dancing. Portable buildings, easily dismantled and re-erected, later made their appearance. In the 19th century the stage itself was solidly constructed, sometimes on the carts that carried the show around, and had a few simple backcloths and properties. The auditorium consisted of a canvas tent that could easily be rolled up and transported on the wagons, the seats being almost always plain wooden planks. Sometimes there was a platform outside from which the performers could tempt the audience in. This was a particular feature of the French fairground theatres which evolved from the early booths, and the first permanent fairground theatres in Paris—which had no counterpart in Britain—had large balconies for the performance of introductory parades. Within the booths performances were gone through as quickly as possible so as to clear the seats for another audience, often as many as 10 or 12 a day. The plays were necessarily simple, farces or strong drama based on popular legends, stories from the classics, the Bible, or history. There were seldom any written scripts, though sometimes a popular play would be adapted for a local audience. The classic example is Maria Marten; or, The Murder in the Red Barn, an anonymous dramatization of a murder which took place in 1828. The booths lasted longest for the accommodation of puppet shows, of which the portable stage of the Punch and Judy show is a vestigial remnant.