What a Great Talker She Was
IN THE OLD DAYS OF VAUDEVILLE and burlesque, standup comics weren’t the only speakers to take to the stage. Another breed of noble performer also stood and delivered, sometimes presenting serious monologues, sometimes simply talking. A few of these artists crossed over to oral interpretation, reciting tried-and-true set pieces from oratory, drama, and poetry. A rare few others did something better : they wove characters and whole dramas out of their imaginations and offered them up for their audiences. This was performance,long before the advent of performance art.
Henry James offered this legendary bit of encouragement: “My dear child, you have woven your own very beautiful little Persian carpet. Stand on it!”
The greatest of these unclassifiables was Ruth Draper (1884–1956). In 1935, a Pittsburgh columnist, puzzling over how to characterize an upcoming performance of hers, wrote that “the English language does not contain a word which perfectly describes [Draper and her art].” He eliminated “Speaking Portraits” and “Character Sketches,” two terms that had been associated with her work, as not quite accurate, while also rejecting “diseuse” and “monologist.” Draper was profoundly sui generis, her performances nothing short of astonishing.
What did she do? She stood or, later in her career, sat on stage, sometimes with a table to go with her chair. And she talked. In the last years of her life, she made a series of recordings for RCA,
