by
Union Army veterans, at right, who sang "
Tenting on the Old Camp Ground". Before
radio,
film and
television, were popular forms of entertainment, even in American frontier towns. Before the age of colour reproduction of images, the was sometimes used to recreate artworks on stage, based on an etching or sketch of a painting. This could be done as an amateur venture in a drawing room, or as a more professionally produced series of presented on a theatre stage, one following another, usually to tell a story without requiring all the usual trappings and production of a full theatre performance. They thus influenced the form taken by later
Victorian and
Edwardian era magic lantern shows, and perhaps also sequential narrative
comic strips (which first appeared in modern form in the late 1890s). were often performed as part of school
Nativity plays in England during the Victorian period; the custom is still practised at
Loughborough High School (believed to be one of England's oldest grammar schools for girls). Several are performed each year at the school carol service, including the depiction of an engraving (in which the subjects are painted and dressed completely grey). Tableaux were also performed for charity events. The February 1917 edition of the American magazine ''
Harper's Bazar'' reported, with many photographs, on two events in London where society ladies posed, mostly as paintings. One event concentrated on paintings by
James McNeill Whistler and
John Singer Sargent, posed by ladies of American birth in London. The other included
Violet Trefusis and
Lady Diana Cooper. and Adolf Salge, around 1908 By a quirk of English law, nudity on the stage was not permitted unless the performers remained motionless while the stage curtains were open; the situation in locations in the United States was often similar. In the early years of the 20th century, performers took advantage of this exception to stage "plastic representations", as they were sometimes called, centring on nudity. The most persistent performer in this line was the German dancer
Olga Desmond, beginning in London, and who later put on
Evenings of Beauty (
Schönheitsabende) in Germany, in which she posed nude in imitation of actual or imagined classical works of art ("living pictures"). The English tradition in risqué entertainment continued until English law was changed in the 1960s. In the nineteenth century, took such titles as "Nymphs Bathing" and "Diana the Huntress" and were to be found at such places as the Hall of Rome in
Great Windmill Street, London. Other venues were the
Coal Hole in the
Strand and the Cider Cellar in
Maiden Lane. Nude and semi-nude were also a frequent feature of variety shows in the US: first
on Broadway in
New York City, then elsewhere in the country. The
Ziegfeld Follies featured such from 1917. The
Windmill Theatre in London (1932–1964) featured nude on stage; it was the first, and for many years the only, venue for them in 20th-century London. Tableaux remain a major attraction at the annual
Pageant of the Masters in
Laguna Beach, California. ==
tableaux in modern photographic theory==