In the days before television and radio, the chautauqua ruled.
Inspired by the mother of all chautauquas in New York state in the late 1800s — a tent show featuring lectures, poetry readings, music and drama — similar shows sprang up in the fields outside of rural communities. They became one of the early purveyors of popular culture.
It was "infotainment," as Dewey Roth of Rosemount called it.
Roth and others will revive the tradition under a tent at the Dakota County Fair starting Monday with a whirlwind of songs and skits — 21 pieces in an hour — about Minnesota history.
A handful of local performers started putting on the tent show during the 1999 Dakota County sesquicentennial, and this year's show features "greatest hits" from past shows as well as a few new pieces.
In the show, each performer takes on a variety of roles. In "Norwegians on Snow Shoes," which chronicles the Blizzard of 1888, Roth plays a school marm. He's also at various times a deputy, an expert on electricity, a Norwegian farmer and Gov. Pillsbury during the grasshopper plague. He plays spoons and he rattles rain sticks.
True to the spirit of the original chautauquas, which often featured temperance speakers, the show opens with a meeting of the St. Joseph Abstinence Society. "Some people are at the meeting and decide they need to leave," said Roth of the skit.
A skit titled "Footprints on the Prairie" deals with the impact of early settlers on the landscape. "That sounds oh-so historic and serious," Roth said, "but there is going to be more laughing than anything else."
