Week 1: Vaudeville

Updated on September 20, 2009 by Matthew

While a complete and better researched history of vaudeville can be found elsewhere, its importance in the history of stand-up comedy is paramount. The idea of a variety show had been around in America since before the Civil War. Traveling circuses, minstrel shows, wild west shows, etc. all provided a cheap form of entertainment to America at a time before recorded or broadcast mediums; and just as the Industrial Revolution was creating a middle class with expendable money and time.

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Week 2: Borscht Belt and the Development of the Zinger

Updated on September 21, 2009 by Matthew

While some vaudeville performers went on to become popular comedians on Television, one person in particular took the form he developed on the vaudeville stage and popularized it into what we today call stand-up. Bob Hope worked as an MC on the vaudeville stage, meaning he came up in between acts to introduce them and give time for the transitions. Rather than a character, Bob Hope performed as himself, relating directly to the audience and entertaining them with jokes.

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Week 3: Political Awareness and Personal Stories

Mort Sahl

It's difficult to discuss the comedy of Mort Sahl without discussing the shifting political climate in 1950s America. Following World War II, America began a period of mass political disillusionment perhaps best represented by the McCarthy House Un-American Activities Committee (and ultimately coming to a head in the late 60s/early 70s with Nixon, Watergate, and the Vietnam War). This was a time when the American Government turned on its own people, persecuting individuals with critical views of the government as communist supporters (see the sidebar links to the McCarthy hearings). While there had been vocal critics and satirists of the American Government in the past, the 50s saw rise to an popular movement called the counter-culture; vocal critics of American policy at home and abroad.

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Week 4: The Rebel becomes Popular

1966 Lenny Bruce Dies

As we discussed last week, Lenny Bruce brought a rebellious truth-telling to the stand-up stage. He discussed taboo subjects and his own personal life in a way that was both believable and (at least to his contemporaries) shocking. This was during the late 50s and early 60s amidst a rising disenchantment with the American Government and corporate authority. This disenchantment came to a head during the Civil Rights Movement & Vietnam War in the late 60s and early 70s.

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Week 5: Stand-Up Turns in on Itself

Last week, we looked at how George Carlin and Richard Pryor represented a shift in the late 60s/early 70s towards truth-telling, social relevancy, and personal narrative within stand-up. While this development continued through the 70s (and is definitely still present in stand-up today), by the mid-to-late 70s another style began to emerge, one that found humor in irrelevancy, irony, and in making fun of stand-up itself.

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Week 6: What Is The Deal With Airplanes?

Starting in the early 70s, two trends emerged that brought stand-up into the mainstream of American entertainment. The first was the opening up of clubs devoted entirely to stand-up comedy (before, most comics either played large halls like Carlin and Pryor; or worked music clubs and bars); and the second was the exposure of the Johnny Carson show.

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Week 7: The Boom Busts; or The Mainstream

As we discussed last week, stand up experienced a boom throughout the 80s. Comedy clubs popped up in most major cities across America creating a larger demand for comics than ever before. Like all bubbles, however, increased demand fueled a supply of mediocre material. The edginess of Carlin or Pryor didn't get you on Television, and a definite sameness swept through stand up style. The observational stuff about relationships and parent's and gender and race became what stand-up meant, and eventually it's appeal worn off. As Zoglin writes in Comedy at the Edge, "after the '80s boom suddenly imploded in the '90s, when at least a third of all clubs nationwide shut down" (223).

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Week 8: Stand-up's Rock

Chris Rock

(Write-up coming shortly)

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Week 9: Un-Cabaret

(Write-Up Coming Shortly)

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Week 10: Stand-up's Wizard

While trying to research Eddie Izzard's career -- with admittedly not much doggedness -- I kept getting the impression that he just appeared, full formed and funny, on stage in London's West End. This is of course not the case, but unlike most of the American stand-ups we've looked at, the story of Izzard's early career is not much of his myth. There are no Jay Leno like war stories of driving from Boston to New York every weekend; or Chris Rock struggling to get seen on SNL. At least not that I could find.

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Week 11: And I'll Leave You With....

write-up coming soon

A collection of comics working today.

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