Works featuring "metatheatre" (38)
Works that go beyond performance, by drawing attention to the fact that it is a performance, or to its production or circumstances.

The Countryman And The Cinematograph

Considered one of the earliest known examples of a film within a film, the surviving footage is incomplete, missing both beginning and ending. Was remade by Edwin S. Porter for Edison, as Uncle Josh at the Moving Picture Show.

Uncle Josh At The Moving Picture Show

A remake of The Countryman And The Cinematograph (1901).

She Would Be An Actress

Intense drama unfolds when wife must choose between the two greatest joys in her life: dancing on stage, and whacking her hubby upside the head. What will she choose: the glamour of stage life, or the fulfillment of pummeling Papa?

Before his Alexander's Ragtime Band shot him to fame, a 20-year-old Irving Berlin penned a modest success in 1909, that included lyrics on the same theme: Sadie Cohen left her happy home//To become an actress lady
On the stage she soon became the rage//As the only real Salomy baby
When she came to town, her sweetheart Mose//Brought for her around a pretty rose
But he got an awful fright//When his Sadie came to sight//He stood up and yelled with all his might: [Refrain:] Don't do that dance, I tell you Sadie//That's not a bus'ness for a lady!
'Most ev'rybody knows//That I'm your loving Mose//Oy, Oy, Oy, Oy//Where is your clothes?...
Oy! such a sad disgrace//No one looks in your face
Sadie Salome, go home

Also, note the original “slap stick” the comic uses, just before she goes on stage.