Inventing the tramp: the early tramp comic on the variety stage

This article examines the ‘tramp’ on the variety stage at the moment of its cultural invention. Immediately after the Panic of 1873, variety actors performed the comic tramp in both blackface and whiteface. However, as the decade continued, the comic tramp in variety transformed into primarily a whiteface, typically Irish-American, figure. Considering the comic tramp as one enduring “dramaturgy of mobility,” the author suggests that this transformation was less a whitening of the comic tramp and more an erasure of black mobility. The Irish-American tramp may have reflected many of the negative characteristics of the tramp, including his wandering nature, his unemployment, and his drinking, but he also showed that the Irish-American comic tramp, unlike the earlier black counterpart, could be part of a community and in some instances, even a hero. Michelle Granshaw is an Assistant Professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research interests include American and Irish theatre and popular entertainment, diaspora and global performance histories, performance and the working class, and historiography. Her articles have appeared in Theatre Survey, Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, Theatre Topics, and the New England Theatre Journal.