Old West Stage Show Photo Postcard

The cowgirls are pretty, the cowboys good looking, but who is that hideous minstrel figure in the background?This rather mysterious real photo postcard seems to be a photo from a stage production, but since there is no title in the negative or on the verso, it is not an advertising card. There is no way to know who is in the photo, who took the photo, where the photo was taken, or precisely when it was made. We do know that the painted backdrop of a road winding into the distance was primitive in the extreme. The banjo player who stands on a box to place him in perspective for the weird backdrop wears a bizarre mask with a ghastly face. The "cowpersons" who make up the chorus, apparently, are quite delighted with the music, and show us smiling faces. But those faces pay no attention to the figure standing off to the right, a young man in a cowboy hat who is witnessing the set up. Who was he?We also know that it is winter, as the bare branches of trees are in the background, and the entire set appears to have been erected in an alley, but we cannot tell for sure. The lack of information makes this photograph even more interesting to me. It's hard to believe that after going through the process of making this postcard, that no one would place some identification on it. But we do not know, and may never know, why this photograph was made at all.