Australia also had touring minstrel shows. The first was organized by Frank Weston, "Weston and La Feuilades Minstrels," in 1869. His show, including both local and American talent, only lasted a short time because Australia was added to the western tour leg of the American shows. There is a book on Australian minstrelsy by Waterhouse (no further data).

Better books on American minstrelsy>
1. Lhamon, W. T., Raising Cain: Blackface Performers from Jim Crow to Hip Hop. Harvard Univ. Press.
2. Lott, Eric, Love and Theft- Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class. Oxford Univ. Press.
3. Maher, Wm. J., Behind the Burnt Mask: Early Blackface Minstrelsy and Antebellum American Popular Culture. Univ. Illinois Press (one of their notable series, Music in American Life Series).
4. Nathan, Hans, Dan Emmett and the Rise of Early Negro Minstrelsy. Univ. Oklahoma Press.
5. Toll, Robert C., Blacking Up: The Minstrel Show in Nineteenth Century America, Oxford Univ. Press.

Occasionally a book of songs and routines put out by one of the old touring groups in the 19th century appears in rare book auctions. They bring $1000 to much more.

Blackface minstrel shows, as Butch has pointed out, became the property of service clubs and the like. I remember vaguely one in the 1930s (I would have been about 10-12), put on, I believe, by the Shriners in blackface with full stage setup. I remember that we blacked up for a skit in high school (about 1940), but I have no memory of the content of the skit.

My grandfather, who saw touring shows in the west in 1880s-1990s and later, told me that there was usually a more serious recitation at some point in the show- a cultural or religious subject. Butch may know when these interludes appeared.