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The Merchant of Venice, even in its own time, was considered Shakespeare's most controversial play. Now, one of the most popularly read and performed works, the play raises even more important issues for our day, particularly anti-Semitism and the treatment of Jews. Shakespeare scholar Jay Halio brings together his fascinating literary insights and his considerable knowledge of Shakespeare's world to this student casebook. His analysis of the play helps students interpret Shakespeare's plot and interwoven subplots, the sources that helped shape the play and the characters, and the thematic issues relating to justice, mercy, and the myriad bonds of human relationships. These themes serve as starting points for a broader understanding of the issues discussed and documented: Elizabethan marriage and women's matrimonial rights; Renaissance concepts of male friendship; legal, moral, and religious views of usury; and the treatment of Jews in Venice and beyond. The concerns raised by the play are put into context with historical materials including Sir Francis Bacon's essay Of Friendship, excerpts from Henry Smith's 1591 A Preparative to Marriage, extracts from Phillip Stubbes'1583 Anatomy of Abuses, and Travel Accounts by Fynes Moryson that describe Venice and how Jews lived there in the early 1600s. This casebook also considers contemporary applications, with essays and editorials on current hate groups in the United States, the treatment of women, and male bonding. This section, culminating with a poignant interview in which actor Hal Halbrook discusses his stage portrayal of Shylock, will leave readers with an appreciation for how profoundly relevant The Merchant of Venice remains for our time.This casebook introduces students to the many issues in the play with a Literary and Dramatic Analysis chapter. Six topic chapters examine the play in its historical context, combining expert discussion and primary documents, making this ideal for interdisciplinary study. Each topic section contains ideas for classroom discussions, research papers, and further suggested readings to help students get the most out of their study of The Merchant of Venice.

Fifty Key Improv Performers highlights the history, development, and impact of improvisational theatre by highlighting not just key performers, but institutions, training centers, and movements to demonstrate the ways improv has shaped contemporary performance both onstage and onscreen. The book features the luminaries of improv, like Viola Spolin, Keith Johnstone, and Mick Napier, while also featuring many of the less well‑known figures in improvisation who have fundamentally changed the way we make and view comedy – people like Susan Messing, Jonathan Pitts, Robert Gravel, and Yvon Leduc. Due to improv's highly collaborative nature, the book features many of the art form's most important theatres and groups, such as The Second City, TJ & Dave, and Oui Be Negroes. While the book focuses on the development of improvisation in the United States, it features several entries about the development of improv around the globe. Students of Improvisational Theatre, History of Comedy, and Performance Studies, as well as practitioners of comedy, will benefit from the wide expanse of performers, groups, and institutions throughout the book.

Comedy is a game that all humans play. There are big social prizes if you win, but it is easy to end up with custard pie on your face... or worse. Comedy can soothe our pain, vent our anger, make us feel less alone and provide the answer to life's most difficult questions, such as, ‘What do you call a man with a seagull on his head?'• It's a social glue but it can also be divisive, and the joke is on us if we don't understand how it works. So, what are the rules? How does comedy do its magic and why does it matter? Join professional comedy writer Joel Morris on a hilarious journey into the hidden world of shared laughter where he reveals the mechanisms that make jokes work and what comedy can teach us about ourselves. Offering astute analysis of everything from stand-up to slapstick and sitcom to spoof, Morris examines comedic patterns, rhythms and dynamics to uncover the algorithms that secretly underpin comedy. Packed with gags and examples of comedy at its best – plus some invaluable tips on how to master that b'dum tish timing – Be Funny or Die is a fascinating investigation into how our species has developed and mastered this essential art form where laughter is the universal language and only the funniest survive. •Cliff.

•••A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!••• From Scott Aukerman and the comedic geniuses who created the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast comes a book that brings the chaotic, hilarious, and outrageous characters of the pod to the page In Comedy Bang! Bang!: The Podcast: The Book, Scott Aukerman transports readers inside the zany world of the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast. The book features brand-new anecdotes and opinions from the show's wild cast of recurring characters, and matches the show in tone and wackiness, with essays, lists, plays, nods to running bits, and four-color illustrations throughout, helping to bring the zany, satirical, undefinable world of Comedy Bang! Bang! to life in new and surprising ways! The book is curated by Aukerman and includes introductions, forewords, and prefaces by legends Patton Oswalt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bob Odinkirk, Tatiana Maslany, “Weird Al” Yankovic, and Jack Quaid. It also features pieces from Bobby Moynihan, Paul F. Thompkins, Ben Schwartz, Mary Holland, Andy Daly, Lauren Lapkis, Paul Brittain, Jessica McKenna, Ego Nwodim, and many more, all reprising roles of characters they've created for the podcast, taking readers even deeper inside the lives of these off-the-wall personalities. If you've ever enjoyed a Solo Bolo or wondered what makes Bob Ducca tick, this book is chock full of inside jokes, character studies, and hilarity!

What Every Woman Knows is a play written by J. M. Barrie. It tells the story of Maggie Wylie, a young Scottish woman who possesses an incredible amount of practical knowledge and common sense, which she uses to help those around her. Despite her intelligence and capabilities, she is often underestimated because of her gender. The play follows her journey as she finds love, marries, and uses her cunning and wit to secure her husband's political career. Throughout the play, Maggie proves that a woman can be just as clever and capable as any man, and that there is a place for women in the political world.

A provocative and unconventional call to dispossess the self of itself Challenging the contemporary notion of “self-care” and the Western mania for “self-possession,” The Comic Self deploys philosophical discourse and literary expression to propose an alternate and less toxic model for human aspiration: a comic self. Timothy Campbell and Grant Farred argue that the problem with the “care of the self,” from Foucault onward, is that it reinforces identity, strengthening the relation between I and mine. This assertion of self-possession raises a question vital for understanding how we are to live with each other and ourselves: How can you care for something that is truly not yours?The answer lies in the unrepresentable comic self. Campbell and Farred range across philosophy, literature, and contemporary comedy—engaging with Socrates, Burke, Hume, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Deleuze, and Levinas; Shakespeare, Cervantes, Woolf, Kafka, and Pasolini; and Stephen Colbert, David Chappelle, and the cast of Saturday Night Live. They uncover spaces where the dispossession of self and, with it, the dismantling of the regime of self-care are possible. Arguing that the comic self always keeps a precarious closeness to the tragic self, while opposing the machinations of capital endemic to the logic of self-possession, they provide a powerful and provocative antidote to the tragic self that so dominates the tenor of our times.

Video Games and Comedy is the first edited volume to explore the intersections between comedy and video games. This pioneering book collects chapters from a diverse group of scholars, covering a wide range of approaches and examining the relationship between video games, humour, and comedy from many different angles. The first section of the book includes chapters that engage with theories of comedy and humour, adapting them to the specifics of the video game medium. The second section explores humour in the contexts, cultures, and communities that give rise to and spring up around video games, focusing on phenomena such as in-jokes, player self-reflexivity, and player/fan creativity. The third section offers case studies of individual games or game series, exploring the use of irony as well as sexual and racial humour in video games.Chapter “Emergence and Ephemerality of Humour During Live Coverage of Large-Scale eSports Events” is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

What makes us laugh? Why is comedy so important? How does comedy affect our behaviour? The Psychology of Comedy provides a unique insight into the role of laughter and humour in our lives. From the mechanics of comedy and what makes a good joke, to the health benefits of laughter, the book delves into different types of comedy, from slapstick to complex puns, and the physiological response it provokes. The dark side of comedy is also considered, confronting the idea that what is funny to some can be offensive to others, making this universal experience also highly subjective. In a time when comedy continues to be one of the most popular and enduring forms of art, The Psychology of Comedy reminds us that laughter really is good for the soul.

Adam Gopnik presents the very best of S. J. Perelman, America's zaniest humorist.S. J. Perelman (1904-1979) wrote for the Marx Brothers films Horse Feathers and Monkey Business and won an Oscar for his screenwriting on Around the World in Eighty Days, but he remains best known for his many sketches and essays penned for The New Yorker during its golden age of humor. In these short comic pieces--Perelman called them feuilletons--his penchant for wordplay, witticism, spoofery, self-deprecation, and plain zaniness are on full display. The New York Times once noted his ability in these magazine pieces'to transform the common cliché or figure of speech into an exploding cigar.'Author and New Yorker staff writer Adam Gopnik has selected the very best of them, including Perelman's parodies of books and films, his biting social satire, autobiographical pieces, and a selection from the celebrated Cloudland Revisited series, in which Perelman reminisces nostalgically about books and movies encountered in youth before describing in his inimitable hyperkinetic style the rude shock of revisiting them as an adult. Also included in this volume are the acclaimed play The Beauty Part (1963) from Perelman's Broadway career; profiles of the Marx Brothers, Dorothy Parker, and his brother-in-law Nathanael West; and a selection of letters written to correspondents such as Groucho Marx and Paul Theroux.

This innovative collection of essays is the first to situate comedy and laughter as central rather than peripheral to nineteenth century life. Victorian Comedy and Laughter: Conviviality,Jokes and Dissent offers new readings of the works of Charles Dickens, Edward Lear,George Eliot, George Gissing, Barry Pain and Oscar Wilde, alongside discussions of much-loved Victorian comics like Little Tich, Jenny Hill, Bessie Bellwood and Thomas Lawrence. Tracing three consecutive and interlocking moods in the period, all of the contributors engage with the crucial critical question of how laughter and comedy shaped Victorian subjectivity and aesthetic form. Malcolm Andrews, Jonathan Buckmaster and Peter Swaab explore the dream of print culture togetherness that is conviviality, while Bob Nicholson, Louise Lee, Ann Featherstone,Louise Wingrove and Oliver Double discuss the rise-on-rise of the Victorian joke — both on the page and the stage — while Peter Jones, Jonathan Wild and Matthew Kaiser consider the impassioned debates concerning old and new forms of laughter that took place at the end of the century.

Contextualizing the duo's work within British comedy, Shakespeare criticism, the history of sexuality, and their own historical moment, this book offers the first sustained analysis of the 20th Century's most successful double-act. Over the course of a forty-four-year career (1940-1984), Eric Morecambe & Ernie Wise appropriated snippets of verse, scenes, and other elements from seventeen of Shakespeare's plays more than one-hundred-and-fifty times. Fashioning a kinder, more inclusive world, they deployed a vast array of elements connected to Shakespeare, his life, and institutions. Rejecting claims that they offer only nostalgic escapism, Hamrick analyses their work within contemporary contexts, including their engagement with many forms and genres, including Variety, the heritage industry, journalism, and more. ‘The Boys'deploy Shakespeare to work through issues of class, sexuality, and violence. Lesbianism, drag, gay marriage, and a queer aesthetics emerge, helping to normalize homosexuality and complicate masculinity in the ‘permissive'1960s.

Sir John Vanbrugh was born in London and baptised on 24th January 1664, the 4th of 19 children.Vanbrugh was very political and soon came afoul of its machinations. He spent some time working undercover to help depose James II and bring about the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the assumption of the throne by William of Orange It was on his return from bringing William messages at The Hague, that he was arrested at Calais on a charge of espionage in September 1688. Vanbrugh remained in prison in France for four and a half years.After his release his career was to move in an entirely unexpected direction, and it would not be the last time.London's theatre at this time was riven by a split among its only legitimate company: the United Company. Colley Cibber, who remained with the management, had written and performed in January 1696 ‘Love's Last Shift'. To Vanburgh's mind it demanded a sequel and who better to come up with that then himself.His play, ‘The Relapse, Or, Virtue in Danger', was offered to the United Company six weeks later. The play was a tremendous success that saved the company. Vanbrugh's second comedy, ‘The Provok'd Wife', soon followed, this time performed by the rebel actors'company. However, in the following few years he was to reinvent himself as an architect. Despite no formal training his inexperience was balanced by his unerring eye for perspective and detail and his close working relationship with Nicholas Hawksmoor, a former clerk of Sir Christopher Wren. He is perhaps best known for his majestic masterpieces: Castle Howard (commissioned in 1699) and Blenheim Palace (commissioned in 1704).Sir John Vanbrugh died suddenly from what was stated as ‘an asthma'on 26th March 1726. He was buried in the church of St Stephen Walbrook in the City of London.

Drawing on plays by Shakespeare, Sarah Kane, Sophocles, Samuel Beckett, and others, this book examines the ways in which these dramatists manipulated the actor's body to demand laughter and/or sympathy. Ian Burrows shows how these strategies can be thought about beyond the stage-space: in the classroom, in the media, and in relation to the social construction of ‘snowflake culture'as a 21st century phenomenon.

Enjoy hours of laughter with hilarious questions for kids that get harder as the book goes on. Who will win the competition for the best answers? Who will outsmart everyone?Laugh and learn with 160+ questions designed to make kids giggle, think, and figure out who's the wittiest (and silliest) of all! Would You Rather? Made You Think! Edition provides endless hours of fun for eight- to twelve-year-olds who love a challenge--and a good laugh.Would You Rather? Made You Think! features: • Learning through play. Kids will exercise their brains with these either/or scenarios that make them think creatively, use their imagination, and pull together facts quickly. • Family time away from screens. 160+ age-appropriate questions, ranging from the mind-boggling to the totally gross. • An exciting game for competitive kids. Try to outsmart family and friends with the most creative answer. • Levels organized by difficulty. As kids complete the levels, the next questions get harder. • Lots of laughs! The questions are funny; kids can make the answers even funnier! • Perfect for road trips, camping trips, restaurants, sleepovers, and dinner conversations. • Classroom fun. These questions can be used to increase student engagement, practice reading and writing comprehension, promote critical thinking skills, and create a fun classroom environment!

Elizabeth Simpson was born on 15th October 1753 at Stanningfield, near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Despite the fact that she suffered from a debilitating stammer she was determined to become an actress. In April 1772, Elizabeth left, without permission, for London to pursue her chosen career. Although she was successful in obtaining parts her audiences, at first, found it difficult to admire her talents given her speech impediment. However, Elizabeth was diligent and hard-working on attempting to overcome this hurdle. She spent much time concentrating on pronunciation in order to eliminate the stammer. Her acting, although at times stilted, especially in monologues, gained praise for her approach for her well-developed characters. That same year she married Joseph Inchbald and a few months later they appeared for the first time together on stage in ‘King Lear'. The following month they toured Scotland with the West Digges's theatre company. This was to continue for several years.Completely unexpectedly Joseph died in June 1779. It was now in the years after her husband's death that Elizabeth decided on a new literary path. With no attachments and acting taking up only some of her time she decided to write plays.Her first play to be performed was ‘A Mogul Tale or, The Descent of the Balloon', in 1784, in which she also played the leading female role of Selina. The play was premiered at the Haymarket Theatre. One of the things that separated Elizabeth from other contemporary playwrights was her ability to translate plays from German and French into English for an audience that was ever-hungry for new works.Her success as a playwright enabled Elizabeth to support herself and have no need of a husband to support her. Between 1784 and 1805 she had 19 of her comedies, sentimental dramas, and farces (many of them translations from the French) performed at London theatres. She is usually credited as Mrs Inchbald.Mrs Elizabeth Inchbald died on 1st August 1821 in Kensington, London.

Ancient philosophers considered question about laughter, humor, and comedy to be both philosophically interesting and important. They theorized about laughter and its causes, moralized about the appropriate uses of humor and what it is appropriate to laugh at, and wrote treaties on comedic composition. They were often merciless in ridiculing their opponents'positions, borrowing comedic devices and techniques from comic poetry and drama to do so. This volume is organized around three sets of questions that illuminate the philosophical concerns and corresponding range of answers found in ancient philosophy. The first set investigates the psychology of laughter. What is going on in our minds when we laugh? What background conditions must be in place for laughter to occur? Is laughter necessarily hostile or derisive? The second set of questions concerns the ethical and social norms governing laughter and humor. When is it appropriate or inappropriate to laugh? Does laughter have a positive social function? Is there a virtue, or excellence, connected to laugher and humor? The third set of questions concerns the philosophical uses of humor and comedic technique. Do philosophers use humor exclusively in criticizing rivals, or can it play a positive educational role as well? If it can, how does philosophical humor communicate its philosophical content? This volume does not aim to settle these fascinating questions but more importantly to start a conversation about them, and serve as a reference point for discussions of laughter, humor, and comedy in ancient philosophy.

Analysing why we laugh and what we laugh at, and describing how performers can elicit this response from their audience, this book enables actors to create memorable – and hilarious – performances.Rooted in performance and performance criticism, Sidney Homan and Brian Rhinehart provide a detailed explanation of how comedy works, along with advice on how to communicate comedy from the point of view of both the performer and the audience. Combining theory and performance, the authors analyse a variety of plays, both modern and classic. Playwrights featured include Harold Pinter, Tom Stoppard, Christopher Durang, and Michael Frayn. Acting in Shakespeare's comedies is also covered in depth.

'Joyfully entertaining. Full of warmth, wisdom and affectionate delight in the wonder and absurdity of being human.'Observer'Funny, honest and heart-warming.'Matt Haig What better way to understand ourselves than through the eyes of comedians - those who professionally examine our quirks on stage? In this touching and witty book, award-winning presenter and comic Robin Ince uses the life of the stand-up as a way of exploring some of the biggest questions we all face. Where does anxiety come from? How do we overcome imposter syndrome? What is the key to creativity? How can we deal with grief? Informed by personal insights as well as interviews with some of the world's top comedians, neuroscientists and psychologists, this is a hilarious and often moving primer to the mind.

Comedy and humour have frequently played a key role in disabled people's lives, for better or for worse. Comedy has also played a crucial part in constructing cultural representations of disability and impairments, contributing to the formation and maintenance of cultural attitudes towards disabled people, and potentially shaping disabled people's images of themselves. As a complex and often polysemic form of communication, there is a need for greater understanding of the way we make meanings from comedy.This is the first book which explores the specific role of comedic film genres in representations of disability and impairment. Wilde argues that there is a need to explore different ways to synthesise Critical/Disability Studies with Film Studies approaches, and that a better understanding of genre conventions is necessary if we are to understand the conditions of possibility for new representational forms and challenges to ableism.After a discussion of the possibilities of a ‘fusion'between Disability Studies and Film Studies, and a consideration of the relationships of comedy to disability, Wilde undertakes analysis of contemporary films from the romantic comedy, satire, and gross-out genres. Analysis is focused upon the place of disabled and non-disabled people in particular films, considering visual, audio, and narrative dimensions of representation and the ways they might shape the expectations of film audiences. This book is of particular value to those in Film and Media Studies, and Critical/Disability Studies, especially for those who are investigating more inclusive practices in cultural representation.

Stand-up: it's the ultimate solo art form. Yet, behind the scenes, you will increasingly find the shadowy figure of a director. For comics themselves and for those who support them, this is the first book to give the director's perspective on creating and performing stand-up comedy. Drawing on his own experience of directing stand-up alongside speaking to comedians and their directors, Chris Head produces a revealing perspective on the creative process, comic persona, writing stand-up, structuring material and delivering a performance.Directors interviewed include Logan Murray, John Gordillo and Simon McBurney, who between them have directed Eddie Izzard, Michael McIntyre, Milton Jones, Lenny Henry and French & Saunders. With a foreword by BBC arts editor Will Gompertz and contributions from many other interviewees including Oliver Double (author of Getting the Joke), this is the only book that goes all the way from one-liners to theatre via comedy club sets and full-length shows.Perfect for stand-ups from newbies to pros, students of comedy, academics studying and teaching stand-up and for directors themselves, A Director's Guide to the Art of Stand-up offers hundreds of inspiring practical insights and shows how creating the comedian's highly personal, individual act can be a deeply collaborative process.

Only a Joke Can Save Us presents an innovative and comprehensive theory of comedy. Using a wealth of examples from high and popular culture and with careful attention to the treatment of humor in philosophy, Todd McGowan locates the universal source of comedy in the interplay of the opposing concepts lack and excess. After reviewing the treatment of comedy in the work of philosophers as varied as Aristotle, G. W. F. Hegel, Sigmund Freud, Henri Bergson, and Alenka Zupancic, McGowan, working in a psychoanalytic framework, demonstrates that comedy results from the deployment of lack and excess, whether in contrast, juxtaposition, or interplay. Illustrating the power and flexibility of this framework with analyses of films ranging from Buster Keaton and Marx Brothers classics to Dr. Strangelove and Groundhog Day, McGowan shows how humor can reveal gaps in being and gaps in social order. Scholarly yet lively and readable, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a groundbreaking examination of the enigmatic yet endlessly fascinating experience of humor and comedy.

Laughing Matters takes an analytic approach to film, television and radio comedy and provides an accessible overview of its forms and contexts. The introduction explains the value of studying comedy, concisely outlines the approach taken and summarises the relevant theories. The subsequent chapters are divided into two parts. The first part examines the specific forms comedy has taken as a constant and key element in film and broadcast comedy from their origins to the present. The second part shows how the genre gravitates towards contentious issues in British and American culture as it finds humour in the boundaries of class, gender, sexuality, race and logic. The authors cover silent cinema comedy including Chaplin, Lloyd and Keaton, sound film comedies including the Marx Brothers and Laurel and Hardy, Romantic film comedy, radio, television situation and sketch comedy, comedy and genre (including parody and spoof), animations from cartoons to CGI, issues of gender and sexuality from drag comedy to queer reading, issues of taste and humour from Carry On to contemporary'gross-out', and issues of race and ethnicity including a case study of African-American screen comedy. Numerous opportunities for following up are highlighted and advice on further reading, writing academically about comedy and an extensive bibliography add to the value of this textbook.

This book explores comic performance in Pakistan through the vibrant Indo-Muslim tradition of the Punjabi bhānd which now holds a marginal space in contemporary weddings. With irreverent repartee, genealogical prowess, a topsy-turvy play with hierarchies and shape shifting, the low-status bhānd jostles space in otherwise rigid class and caste hierarchies. Tracing these negotiations in both historical and contemporary sites, the author unfolds a dynamic performance mode that travels from the Sanskrit jester and Sufi wise fool, into Muslim royal courts and households, weddings, contemporary carnivalesque and erotic popular Punjabi theatre and satellite television news. Through original historical and ethnographic research, this book brings to life hitherto unexplored territories of Pakistani popular culture and Indo-Muslim performance histories.

“Like the best of his subjects, which include Stephen Colbert, Bill Murray and Tina Fey, Wasson has perfect timing.”—Minneapolis Star-Tribune Finalist for the 2017 George Freedley Memorial Award In this richly reported, scene-driven narrative, Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv from its unlikely beginnings in McCarthy-era Chicago. We witness the chance meeting between Mike Nichols and Elaine May, hang out at the after-hours bar where Dan Aykroyd hosted friends like John Belushi, Bill Murray, and Gilda Radner, and go behind the scenes of cultural landmarks from The Graduate to The Colbert Report. Along the way, we befriend pioneers such as Harold Ramis, Chevy Chase, Steve Carell, Amy Poehler, Alan Arkin, Tina Fey, Judd Apatow, and many others. “Compelling, absolutely unputdownable…And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told.”—Booklist “One of the most important stories in American popular culture…Wasson may be the first author to explain [improv's] entire history…a valuable book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Improv Nation masterfully tells a new history of American comedy…It holds the element of surprise—true to the spirit of its subject.”—Entertainment Weekly

This collection of essays explores laughter, humor, and the comic from a psychoanalytic perspective. Edited by two leading practicing psychoanalysts and with original contributions from Lacanian practitioners and scholars, this cutting-edge volume proposes a paradigm swerve, a Freudian slip on a banana peel. Psychoanalysis has long been associated with tragedy and there is a strong warrant to take up comedy as a more productive model for psychoanalytic practice and critique. Jokes and the comic have not received nearly as much consideration as they deserve given the fundamental role they play in our psychic lives and the way they unite the fields of aesthetics, literature, and psychoanalysis. Lacan, Psychoanalysis and Comedy addresses this lack and opens up the discussion.

Anthropological writings on humor are not very numerous or extensive, but they do contain a great deal of insight into the diverse mental and social processes that underlie joking and laughter. On the basis of a wide range of ethnographic and textual materials, the chapters examine the cognitive, social, and moral aspects of humor and its potential to bring about a sense of amity and mutual understanding, even among different and possibly hostile people. Unfortunately, though, cartoons, jokes, and parodies can cause irremediable distress and offence. Nevertheless, contributors'cross-cultural evidence confirms that the positive aspects of humor far outweigh the danger of deepening divisions and fueling hostilities

In this lucid and original study, first published in 1972, Ralph Berry discusses the ten comedies that run from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night. Berry's purpose is to identify the form of each play by relating the governing idea of the play to the action that expresses it. To this end the author employs a variety of standpoints and techniques, and taken together, these chapters present a lively and coherent view of Shakespeare's techniques, concerns, and development. This title will be of interests to students of literature and drama.

Despite being roundly cited as much harder to perform than its dramatic counterpart, comic acting is traditionally seen as a performance genre that can't be taught. At best it is often described as a skill that can only be learned'on the job'through years of practice, or given to a performer through natural talent. Acting Comedy is an effort to examine this idea more rigorously by looking at different aspects of the comic actor's craft. Each chapter is written by an expert in a particular form—from actors and directors to teachers and standup comedians. Topics covered include: how performers work with audiences how comic texts can be enhanced through word and musical rhythm analysis how physical movements can generate comic moments and build character. This book is an invaluable resource for any performer focusing on the minute details of comic acting, even down to exactly how one delivers a joke on stage. Christopher Olsen's unique collection of comic voices will prove essential reading for students and professionals alike.

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Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice presents the most current international scholarship on the complexity and subversive potential of women's comedic speech, literature, and performance. Earlier comedy theorists such as Freud and Bergson did not envision women as either the agents or audiences of comedy, only as its targets. Only more recently have scholarly studies of comedy begun to recognize and historicize women's contributions to—and political uses of—comedy. The essays collected here demonstrate the breadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy, spanning centuries of literature and a diversity of methodologies.Through a reconsideration of literary, theatrical, and mass media texts from the Classical period to the present, Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice responds to the historical marginalization and/or trivialization of both women and comedy. The essays collected in this volume assert the importance of recognizing the role of women and comedy in order to understand these texts, their historical contexts, and their possibilities and limits as models for social engagement. In the spirit of comedy itself, these analyses allow for opportunities to challenge and reevaluate the theoretical approaches themselves.

First Published in 1994. Look Who's Laughing belies the notion that in a joke the only place for a woman is in the butt, Rather than analysing women's humor in isolation, Gail Finney and twenty scholars map the terrain that the genders share and the areas that each hold exclusively. Their essays investigate witty heroines, sexual parodies, domestic humor and romantic power. They focus on comic drama and fiction, stand-up comedy, cartoons, and film describing the roles gender has played in the creation, reception and interpretation of comedy from the sixteenth century to present. They consider works by Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Zora Neale Hurston and Virginia Woolf, whilst discussing characters such as V.I. Warshawski, Molly Bloom and Elizabeth Bennet. The book's emphasis on comedy's diverse sources uncovers critical prejudices and defines new contexts enabling men and women to understand more about each other's attitudes towards humor, its means and ends.

This new edition of Andrew Stott's Comedy builds on themes presented in the first edition such as focusing on the significance of comic'events'through study of various theoretical methodologies, including deconstruction, psychoanalysis and gender theory, and provides case studies of a number of themes, ranging from the drag act to the simplicity of slipping on a banana skin. This new edition features: updates to reflect new research the field new chapters on Women in Comedy and Race and Ethnicity a broader range of literary and cultural examples. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book is ideal introduction to comedy for students studying literature and culture.

Slapstick comedy has a long and lively history from Greek Theatre to the present day. This book explores the ways in which comic pain and comic violence are performed within slapstick to make the audience laugh. It draws examples from theatre, television and film on both sides of the Atlantic.

You may love to make your friends and family laugh—but have you ever thought of making laughter your job? While many people love to laugh at their favorite comedians, few people know about the business behind the laughs. A willingness for risk-taking in presenting yourself to an audience and being open to judgment and feedback, along with writing and performance style are required to pursue this art form. Learn how comedians make their living and discover what it takes to begin a career in comedy.

Long form scenic improv began with the Harold. The comic philosophy of this form started an era of comedy marked by support, trust, and collaboration. This book tells of the Harold, beginning with the development of improv theatre, through the tensions and evolutions that led to its creation at iO, and to its use in contemporary filmmaking.

Don-A Juan is a comedy in two acts. It is the modern day version of a female Casanova. Don-A is a seductress in love with love and life, except that she is unaware of her actions.

The book aims at reframing the discussion on the'public sphere,'usually understood as the place where the public opinion is formed, through rational discussion. The aim of this book is to give an account of this rationality, and its serious shortcomings, examining the role of the media and the confusing of public roles and personal identity. It focuses in particular on the role of the theatrical and comical in the historical development of the public sphere, and in this manner reformulating definitions of common sense, personal identity, and culture.

While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy, and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful, commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don't work, and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).

'a work on the art and craft of comedy as important in its own way as works by Stanislavski and Chekhov'– Oxford Theatre CompanionIn 1939, a young, inexperienced actor wrote to a famous actress of his acquaintance, asking for advice on playing comedy. She responded enthusiastically, and they corresponded variously over the next year. The Craft of Comedy, a record of these exchanges, soon emerged as one of the few classic texts in the field of comedy acting.This major new edition takes a brilliant book and makes it better. Editor Robert Barton has devised extensive supplementary material, including: An introduction to the correspondents, the culture of the time, and the evolution of their book; Summaries, definitions, and exercises and practice scenes for readers wishing to explore Athene Seyler's invaluable advice; Photographs, additional essays by Seyler, and a guide to easily accessed video clips of her performing. Seyler's lucid guidance, and Barton's scrupulous editorship, ensure this legendary work's rightful status is restored: as one of the great practical guides to the craft of comedy, and an essential resource for actors and students of acting.

In this great philosophical essay, Henri Bergson explores why people laugh and what laughter means. Written at the turn of the twentieth century, Laughter explores what it is in language that makes a joke funny and what it is in us that makes us laugh.One of the functions of humor, according to Bergson, is to help us retain our humanity during an age of mechanization. Like other philosophers, novelists, poets, and humorists of his era, Bergson was concerned with the duality of man and machine. His belief in life as a vital impulse, indefinable by reason alone, informs his perception of comedy as the relief we experience upon distancing ourselves from the mechanistic and materialistic.'A situation is always comic,'Bergson notes,'if it participates simultaneously in two series of events which are absolutely independent of each other, and if it can be interpreted in two quite different meanings.'The philosopher's thought-provoking insights (e.g.,'It seems that laughter needs an echo. Our laughter is always the laughter of a group.') keep this work ever-relevant as a thesis on the principles of humor.

‘a one-off from the word go, and no history of English humour could overlook him.'Tom StoppardN.F. Simpson (1919-2011) was a leading exponent of the Theatre of the Absurd, with the Royal Court classics A Resounding Tinkle (1957) and One Way Pendulum (1959) sealing his reputation as a comic master with a subtle philosophical undertow.Emerging during a revolutionary period in British theatre, Simpson rose to prominence alongside Harold Pinter, John Osborne and Arnold Wesker. His work has been embraced and performed by comedy legends including Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, Beryl Reid and Dick Emery. His influence spread widely, from Peter Cook's much loved character E.L. Wisty to Monty Python's Flying Circus, and helped spawn a generation of outstanding comic talent.This authorised collection presents the best of Simpson's short works for audiences new and old. Featuring more than sixty pieces from across six decades, the full spectrum of an extraordinary career is brought together in one volume for the first time: monologues, sketches, criticism and poetry, written for radio, television, stage and print. It includes all of Simpson's anarchic collaborations with Willie Rushton for Private Eye, a generous selection of previously unseen pieces from his final manuscript, as well as a critical introduction by Simpson collaborator Simon Usher.‘A wonderfully funny collection of the sort of short pieces that can only really find a suitable home in…well…a wonderfully funny collection of short pieces. Comic genius.'David Nobbs'This is a treasure trove of the work of a fine, original, comic mind.'Sheila Hancock‘A marvellous collection, showcasing the best of Simpson's benignly radical, gently subversive genius. The truly remarkable thing is that his characters'bizarre flights of lunacy seem saner and more rational with every passing year.'Jonathan Coe‘Reading N. F. Simpson for the first time all those years ago was a revelation, a Taj Mahal to the head. He laid the foundation for most of what I truly love about comedy; he was the fifth Goon, the seventh Python, the Wally in Pete'n'Dud'n'Wally, the third Booshista, the Godfather of English Absurdism and a phenomenally good writer. You should read him as a matter of extreme urgency.'Chris Addison‘N.F. Simpson is one of the greatest British philosophers and funniest playwrights of all time.'David Quantick‘You might call N.F. Simpson a surrealist if he were not so funny. Or the Spike Milligan of suburbia if his plays were not so crafted. But really he was a one-off from the word go, and no history of English humour could overlook him.'Tom Stoppard'Laugh out loud funny with a delightful sense of the absurd. A hilarious ode to the absurdity of the human spirit. Original, silly, and very funny.'Isy Suttie

Full Length, Comedy. Characters: 7 male, 8 female. Unit set.. Television mogul Jacque St. Yves invites eleven has been comics to his island lodge off the Canadian coast to audition for the central in role his new TV series. It's an opportunity to die for... and that is someone's intention! Shortly after arriving, the comics find they are stranded along with the pilot of St. Yves's private jet, the attractive flight attendant and the couple employed as housekeeper and handyman. That night, the housekeeper disappears during a violent thunderstorm and her husband drops dead after ingesting candy that any of them could have sampled. Laughs and chills abound until the startling truth emerges and the tension mounts.

Comedy / 2m, 3f / Interior / Needing to prove his theories work, an author of books on success through self confidence picks the world's biggest loser and makes him a winner nearly losing everything to him in the process. Popular author Jack Sharkey's last comedy, Just Say Yes! was written with his brother, the composer and librettist of It's a Wonderful Life.

Comedy is a global multibillion dollar industry and it is also one of the easiest ones to get into. Performing Live Comedy is for anyone who has ever thought about getting up onstage and being funny or for those who have already started. It offers a breakdown of the process of live comedy and provides a basic toolbox for the student and aspirant comedian, covering all aspects of live comedy such as stand-up, music, double acts, ventriloquists and magicians. Gender, sexuality, ethnicity and disability are also covered in this book as well as ethical considerations on what we should or should not joke about. The book breaks down the entire process of live comedy from writing a simple one-liner to creating a complete act, from organising an open spot at the local comedy club to getting into the Edinburgh Festival and running your own venue. Performing Live Comedy is full of advice and original interviews with comedians and writers currently involved in the comedy industry such as Rob Grant (Red Dwarf), Shazia Merza, Henning Wehn, Ed Aczel, Paul Zerdin and Lucy Greaves.

This essay collection is dedicated to intersections between gender theories and theories of laughter, humour, and comedy. It is based on the results of a three-year research programme, entitled “Gender – Laughter – Media” (2003-2006) and includes a series of investigations on traditional and modern media in western cultures from the 18th to the 20th century. A theoretical opening part is followed by four thematic sections that explore the multiple forms of irritating stereotypical gender perceptions; aspects of (post-)colonialism and multiculturalism; the comic impact of literary and media genres in different national cultures; as well as the different comic strategies in fictional, philosophical, artistic or real life communication. The volume presents a variety of new approaches to the overlaps between gender and laughter that have only barely been considered in groundbreaking research. It forms a valuable read for scholars of literary, theatre, media, and cultural studies, at the same time reaching out to a general readership.

A Lacanian look at how comedy might come to philosophy's rescue, with examples ranging from Hegel and Molière to George W. Bush and Borat.Why philosophize about comedy? What is the use of investigating the comical from philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives? In The Odd One In, Alenka Zupancic considers how philosophy and psychoanalysis can help us understand the movement and the logic involved in the practice of comedy, and how comedy can help philosophy and psychoanalysis recognize some of the crucial mechanisms and vicissitudes of what is called humanity. Comedy by its nature is difficult to pin down with concepts and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice comedy is a mode of tarrying with a foreign object—of including the exception. Philosophy's relationship to comedy, Zupancic writes, is not exactly a simple story (and indeed includes some elements of comedy). It could begin with the lost book of Aristotle's Poetics, which discussed comedy and laughter (and was made famous by Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose). But Zupancic draws on a whole range of philosophers and exemplars of comedy, from Aristophanes, Molière, Hegel, Freud, and Lacan to George W. Bush and Borat. She distinguishes incisively between comedy and ideologically imposed, “naturalized” cheerfulness. Real, subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection between heterogeneous orders. Zupancic examines the mechanisms and processes by which comedy lets the odd one in.

'Soul of the age!'Ben Jonson eulogized Shakespeare, and in the next breath,'He was not of an age but for all time.'That he was both'of the age'and'for all time'is, this book suggests, the key to Shakespeare's comic genius. In this engaging introduction to the First Folio comedies, Paul A. Olson gives a persuasive and thoroughly engrossing account of the playwright's comic transcendence, showing how Shakespeare, by taking on the great themes of his time, elevated comedy from a mere mid-level literary form to its own form of greatness--on par with epic and tragedy

Love Song for the Life of the Mind develops the view of comedy that, the author argues, would have been set out in Aristotle's missing second book of Poetics. As such it is both a philosophical and a historical argument about Aristotle; and the theory of comedy it elucidates is meant to be trans-historically and trans-culturally accurate.