Laughing Stalk, The

Judy Batalion

Description

With contributions by leading scholars, writers and comedians in the USA, the UK and Canada, The Laughing Stalk: Live Comedy and Its Audiences focuses on the dynamics of audience behavior. Performers, writers, historians, producers, and theorists explore the practice and reception of live comedy performance, including cultural and historical variations in comedy audience conduct, the reception of “low” versus “high” comedy, and the differences between televised and live jokes. Contributors reflect on the subjectivity of audience members and the spread of affect, as well as the two-way relationship between joker and listener. They investigate race, sexuality and gender in humor, and contemplate the comedy club as a distinct spatial and emotional environment. The Laughing Stalk: Live Comedy and Its Audiences includes excerpts and scripts from Michael Frayne’s Audience and Andrea Fraser’s Inaugural Speech. Judy Batalion interviews noted comic writers, performers, and theater designers, including Iain Mackintosh, Shazia Mirza, Julia Chamberlain, Scott Jacobson, and Andrea Fraser. Sarah Boyes contributes a short photographic essay on comedy clubbers. Essay contributors include Alice Rayner, Matthew Daube, Lesley Harbidge, Gavin Butt, Diana Solomon, Rebecca Krefting, Kevin McCarron, Nile Seguin, Elizabeth Klaver, Frances Gray, AL Kennedy, Kélina Gotman, and Samuel Godin. The comedy duo of Sable & Batalion share their conclusions about audience responses to hip-hop theater.

Informations

• Publié par: Parlor Press, LLC
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781602352445
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE LAUGHING STALK
Live Comedy and Its Audiences
HUMOR
With contributions by leading scholars, writers and comedians in the USA, the UK
and Canada, The Laughing Stalk: Live Comedy and Its Audiences focuses
on the dynamics of audience behavior. Performers, writers, historians, p -roduc
ers, and theorists explore the practice and reception of live comedy performance, THE LAUGHING STALK
including cultural and historical variations in comedy audience condu-ct, the re
ception of “low” versus “high” comedy, and the differences between televised and
live jokes. Contributors reflect on the subjectivity of audience members and the
spread of affect, as well as the two-way relationship between joker and listener. Live Comedy and Its Audiences
They investigate race, sexuality and gender in humor, and contemplate t - he com
edy club as a distinct spatial and emotional environTmh een tL. aughing Stalk:
Live Comedy and Its Audiences includes excerpts and scripts from Michael
Frayne’s Audience and Andrea Fraser’s Inaugural Speech. Judy Batalion interviews
noted comic writers, performers, and theater designers, including Iain Mackintosh,
Shazia Mirza, Julia Chamberlain, Scott Jacobson, and Andrea Fraser. Sarah Boyes Edited by Judy Batalion
contributes a short photographic essay on comedy clubbers. Essay contrib-utors in
clude Alice Rayner, Matthew Daube, Lesley Harbidge, Gavin Butt, Diana Solomon,
BATALIONRebecca Krefting K, evin McCarron, Nile Seguin, Elizabeth Klaver, Frances Gray,
AL Kennedy, Kélina Gotman, and Samuel Godin. The comedy duo of Sable &
Batalion share their conclusions about audience responses to hip-hop theater.
Judy Batalion is a writer, performer, and independent scholar. She has written and
performed stand-up, sketches, improv, one-woman shows, short films, and comedy
theater in her native Canada, throughout the UK (where she spent a decade), and in
the US. Her academic work has appeared in publications incluCdoinnteg mporary
Theatre Review, and her journalism and personal essays have been published in
newspapers, magazines and blogs, including t Whae shington Post, the Jerusalem
Post, Salon, the Forward and Nerve. She has a BA from Harvard in the History of
Science, and a PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, in
Art History. She currently resides in New York City.
AESTHETIC CRITICAL INQUIRY
Series Editor, Andrea Feeser
3015 Brackenberry Drive
Anderson, South Carolina 29621
http://www.parlorpress.com
S A N: 2 5 4 – 8 8 7 9
ISBN 978-1-60235-244-5 PARLOR
PRESSAesthetic Critical Inquiry
Andrea Feeser, Series EditorTHE LAUGHING STALK
Live Comedy and Its Audiences
Edited by Judy Batalion
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.comParlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, USA
© 2012 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The laughing stalk : live comedy and its audiences / edited by Judy Batalion.
p. cm. -- (Aesthetic critical inquiry)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-60235-242-1 (pbk. : acid-free paper) -- ISBN
978-1-60235243-8 (hardcover : acid-free paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-244-5 (adobe
ebook) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-245-2 (epub)
1. Stand-up comedy. 2. Performance--Psychological aspects. I. Batalion,
Judy.
PN1969.C65L37 2012
792.7’6--dc23
2011044537
Cover design by David Blakesley.
Cover Image: Juan Muñoz, Towards the Corne, 1r 998. © Tate, London, 2011.
Used by permission.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles
in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paper, cloth and
Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://
www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores.
For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications,
write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, South Carolina,
29621, or email [e-mail]
Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Difference at Work: The Live Comedy Audience 3
Judy Batalion
Locating Live Comedy
1 Creating the Audience: It’s All in the Timing 28
Alice Rayner
2 Room for Comedy 40
Iain Mackintosh
3 The Stand-up as Stand-in: Performer-Audience Intimacy
and the Emergence of the Stand-Up Comic in the United
States since the 1950s 57
Matthew Daube
4 A Comedic Tour de Monde 82
Shazia Mirza
The Cult-ure of the Audience, and Audiences of Culture
5 Audienceship and (Non)Laughter in the Stand-up Comedy
of Steve Martin 96
Lesley Harbidge
6 Hoyle’s Humility 116
Gavin Butt
7 George Lillo’s The London Merchan at nd the Laughing
Audience 124
Diana Solomon
8 Laughter in the Final Instance: The Cultural Economy of
Humor (Or why women aren’t perceived to be as funny as men) 140
Rebecca Krefting
The Industry, or, the Audience in the
Making of the Comedy Show
9 Rhyme or Reason: Trying to Draw Some Conclusions
about Comedy Audiences 157
Sable & Batalion
vvi Contents
10 Choosing Comedy 165
Julia Chamberlain
11 Seven Steps to the Stage: The Audience as Co-creator of
the Stand-up Comedy Night  174
Kevin McCarron
12 Hecklers: A Taxonomy 186
Nile Seguin
13 The Comedy Clubbers: Photographs 189
Sarah Boyes
14 Audience 194
Michael Frayn
Live Comedy in Context
15 Ugly Betty and the (Live) Comedy Audience 202
Elizabeth Klaver
16 Watching Me, Watching You: Sitcom and Surveillance 220
Frances Gray
17 Obscene or Absent: Literary versus Comedy Audiences 235
AL Kennedy
18 The Daily Show’s Studio Audience 248
Scott Jacobson
19 It’s My Show, Or, Shut Up and Laugh: Spheres of
Intimacy in the Comic Arena and How New Technologies
Play Their Part in the “Live” Act 253
Kélina Gotman and Samuel Godin
20 High Time for Humor 271
Andrea Fraser
21 Inaugural Speech 279
Andrea Fraser
About the Editor 291Illustrations
Figure 1.1 Pierre-August Renoir, At the Theatr. e 10
Figure 2.1 Audience Seating Plan, Olivier, Royal National
Theatre, London. 42
Figure 2.2 Olivier, Royal National Theatre, London. 43
Figure 2.3 Tony Blair at a Party Conference. 54
Figure 2.4 George Michael at Wembley Stadium. 54
Figure 7.1 William Hogarth, The Laughing Audienc. e 125
Figure 9.1 Jerome Sable and Eli Batalion. 158
Figures 13.1 to 13.4 Sarah Boyes, The Comedy Clubbers:
Photographs. 190–193
Figure 14.1 Plan 1 and Plan 2 for Michael Frayn, Audience. 200
Figures 21.1, 21.2, 21.3 Andrea Fraser, Inaugural Speech,
video stills. 289–290
viiAcknowledgments
While I had known that a stand-up set could be four minutes, I had
not realized that a book about stand-up sets could take the better part
of a decade to complete (and it’s a good thing I hadn’t!). Myriad people
were involved in making this collection, from brainstorming to
polishing stages, and they all deserve acknowledgment. Sadly, most won’t
get it.
Enormous thanks to Andrea Feeser, the series editor, who offered
me the chance to propose a book, helped me develop the idea at every
stage, offered answers to my endless questions, and read countless
drafts of each essay. Thanks to all the contributors for their dedication,
hard work and extreme patience; thanks to their agents and
representatives; and thanks to the comedy writers whose inspiring work did
not, for whatever reason, end up in the collection. Thanks to David
Blakesely at Parlor Press for his persistence and advice, and Terra W-il
liams for her editorial eye. Thanks to Dominic Johnson, Robbie Praw,
and Xavier Ribas for suggesting potential contributors. Thanks to the
Courtauld Institute of Art Research Forum for awarding me a
postdoctoral fellowship during which time I completed the bulk of my ed-i
torial work. Thank you to every audience that I’ve been part of, as well
as those that I interacted with as a performer, even the ones–especially
the ones–who loathed me, thereby making me work to understand
them. And thanks, of course, to Jon Lightman, my most brutal and
most constant audience, for being crazy enough to share his life with a
performer/academic/writer.
ixThe Laughing Stalk
1Introduction
Diference at Work: Te Live
Comedy Audience
Judy Batalion
Life is a comedy for those who think . . . and a tragedy for
those who feel.
—Horace Walpole
Life Is a Comedy for Those Who Think
This collection of writing explores live comedy audiences, considering
the meaning and composition of an audience in today’s global world,
and the ways live audiences represent a magnified series of intimate
relations and emotional expressions including love and hate. This is a
book about the stage and the seats, the sorts who are in/on them, and
how difference plays itself out between them. Informed by my work in
academia and stand up—my dual experience as a cultural critic and
performer—this project offers observations and analysis based in two
very different discourses that hopefully help fle