For thousands of years, man has watched stories told through flickering images, be they in front of a campfire or displayed on a television. Performance modes and styles have changed, but the human need to entertain and be entertained has remained a constant of our species.

The performing arts are both the oldest forms of human expression and the greatest contemporary source of new cultural memes. Primitive man and the hippest club-goers both loved music and dance, although it is hard to tell whether they would appreciate each other's art.

In this chapter, we will review the most significant people in the performing arts. We start from the era before recorded media and continue through the present day. We will analyze trends in classical and popular music, for clues as to which of these cultural streams is likely to dominate historically. We do the same for broadcast and visual media, studying the history of film, radio, and television as a guide to the future of communications.

Before Recording Technology

Sunday preachers can be thought of as early America's most prominent class of performing artist. The rigors of the six-day workweek and the strictures of the Christian Sabbath left little time for secular entertainment, but spellbinding ministers drew large crowds for Sunday worship. In his autobiography [Franklin, 1818], Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) [35] estimated that more than 30,000 people attended a sermon by George Whitefield (1714–1770) [1258] in Philadelphia.