Robert Viagas

But I have to tell you that back in those days, one of the most popular forms of entertainment was ethnic entertainment.

People would make fun of different ethnic groups.

They had what they would call a Dutch comedian, which was a Jewish comedian.

They would have Irish comedians.

They would come in and they would do Irish accents.

And there was a tremendous amount of blackface.

For years, they had a form of entertainment called minstrel shows where white actors would dress up as black actors.

They would black up and they would tell stories.

you know, why did a chicken cross the road?

That sort of thing.

And this was the most popular form of entertainment in this country.

But at that same period of time, if you told a sexual joke, if you told a dirty joke,

You would be blackballed.

You would not be able to work.

In vaudeville, they had very strict rules about what kinds of things that you could joke about and what you could not.

All right?

That was only 100 years ago.

In the last 100 years, it has come 180 degrees.

if you come out and uh tell a sexual joke people laugh their heads off this children on sitcoms that do sexual humor but at the same time if you come out and you do a uh an ethnic character the our sense of humor what we consider to be funny has changed so much in the last hundred years and those are just a couple of examples

Well, I know that on Broadway, which most of my experience is with dealing with Broadway audiences, it is notorious among actors that Friday night audiences are always the worst.