28. attend a Chautauqua

A Brief History of Chautauqua

The daytime session that I went to today was on the history of Chautauqua. It was presented by Kathryn Ballard, the Artistic Director and Road Manager of the Heartland Chautauqua.

The roots of Chautauqua are in an 1874 workshop for Sunday School teachers that took place in Chautauqua, New York. The teachers wanted further adult education, beyond religious studies. The programming was quickly expanded to include book discussions, lectures, and explanations of the latest scientific discoveries.

The tent was apart of the earliest Chautauqua gatherings because there was no building large enough for the large crowds that attended the evening programs. A tent city was also set up in the area to accommodate people who traveled to the Chautauqua event, including people from the MidWest. When MidWesterners returned home, they wanted to find a way to bring the programming to their communities. With much effort and expense, some managed to engage Chautauqua speakers and use printed material from the Chautauqua Press to simulate the experience in their home towns.

Eventually, a couple of businesses saw the opportunity here. From vaudeville, they borrowed the concept of a "circuit" of performance venues. From the circus and the original Chautauqua, they borrowed the idea of holding events under a tent. The Chautauqua companies provided the tent, stage, crew, posters, and speakers for a week's worth of programming. The local community paid a little money up front and did the legwork of selling tickets in advance.

The first year the Chautauqua circuit had 40 towns. By the early 1900s, there were thousands of towns on the Chautauqua circuit. The citizens of these towns heard speakers on all kinds of topics and from all over the country, including the ever-popular William Jennings Bryan. Some symphonies and other musical groups went on the Chautauqua circuit. These Chautauquas also had tent cities associated with them for farmers who came from longer distances. Chautauqua week was an anticipated and cherished summer event in many towns.

I attended this talk in a nursing home. One of the residents remembered going to Chautauqua every summer in Eolia, Missouri. She said that some of the programs were very good and that "some didn't amount to much."