Lynn Poole discusses the era of American showboats and their on-water performances, such as the melodrama "The Drunkard." The first act of this play is performed in the studio by Naomi Evans, Betty Shaffer, Joe Bandiera, Mel Shaffer, Robert Adams, Maurice Sole, Jane Pollard, Walter Koehler, and Sonny Harmon, and Mr. Poole summarizes the remainder of the plot. Film clips show river boats and a few specialty numbers or entre acts that took place between play scenes. Vaudeville often followed the play, like the program's barbershop quartet singing "Bird in a Gilded Cage." In 1817 Noah Ludlow and his acting troupe boarded a keelboat and performed in halls onshore. Chapman's 1831 Floating Theater was the first pre-Civil War showboat to ply the rivers and entertain culture-hungry audiences with lectures, plays, religious revivals, circuses, and museums. Between 1870-1920, other riverboats, such as Augustus B. French's "New Sensation," were popular floating theaters, their calliopes dignaling the coming of the showboat into town.