Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Comedy

Comedy is crucial to how the English see themselves. This book considers that proposition through a series of case studies of popular English comedies and comedians in the twentieth century, ranging from the Carry On films to the work of Mike Leigh and contemporary sitcoms such as The Royle Family, and from George Formby to Alan Bennett and Roy 'Chubby' Brown.

Relating comic traditions to questions of class, gender, sexuality and geography, A National Joke looks at how comedy is a cultural thermometer, taking the temperature of its times. It asks why...

Do you think you're funny? Do you want to turn your sense of humor into a career? If the answer is yes, then Judy Carter's The Comedy Bible is for you. The guru to aspiring stand-up comics provides the complete scoop on being--and writing--funny for money.

If you've got a sense of humor, you can learn to make a career out of comedy, says...

Will Rogers and Florenz Ziegfeld are two magic names in show business. Today Rogers is considered America's most beloved humorist, while Ziegfeld is recognized as the most flamboyant impresario in the history of the American musical theatre.

Rogers was one of Ziegfeld's greatest comedy stars, performing in six editions of the Follies from 1916 to 1925. "Ziggy gave me my start," he once said. It was on the Follies stage that he began to joke extensively about current events and to poke fun at celebrities.

Will Rogers at the Ziegfeld Follies features the humorist's writings and poignant...

Between 1904 and 1908, Rogers made the transition from Wild West shows to the vaudeville stage. During these early years, he developed and polished his act, blending his homespun humor with his cowboy skills of roping and horseback riding to the delight of his audience. At the same time he began courting Betty Blake, his future wife. Their on-again, off-again relationship matured as Rogers was...

How do contemporary American female comics perform onstage, and what does this performance reveal about power relations in our culture as well as the existence of a "female" and, more specifically, "feminist" genre of stand-up comedy? In this long overdue study of women and stand-up comedy, Joanne R. Gilbert explores these questions in order to illuminate the social, political, and cultural implications of power and gender in popular entertainment.

Gilbert's research recognizes the problems that arise from assumptions made about the genres of "female" and "feminist" humor and...