Contrary to Bert Williams’ on-stage persona, in his personal life, he was very reserved and defaulted to his on-stage partner George Walker to be the spokesman of the duo. This reservation comes from Williams’ desire to separate his public and private lives, using blackface as a mask to create an outlandish stage character as he “identified himself as little as possible with the black people about him” (1). He wanted to perform blackness differently on stage, so he engaged with his audience in a more restrained character instead of the extreme exaggeration of minstrelsy. Straying from the extreme was difficult, as Williams was over six feet tall, weighed over 200 lbs, and moved in a clumsy way (1). Additionally, he had little talent as a singer or dancer – as his real skill was his storytelling and comedic timing – so he cultivated styles that hid this. In his deep voice, Williams told his jokes as stories that sounded like age-old folklore, captivating the audience with his casual delivery. In his gestures, Williams represented Bertolt Brecht’s notion of gestic showing, revealing “the social relationships prevailing between people of a given period” through his movements, song, and speech (5). Bert Williams had a character that captivated his audiences while still challenging the traditional idea of black characters in Vaudeville, thus helping him gain prestige while making a social commentary.