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Alternative Comedy
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe content that was an "alternative" to the mainstream of live comedy, which often involved racist and sexist material. In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt has defined it as "comedy where the audience has no pre-set expectations about the crowd, and vice versa. In comedy clubs, there tends to be a certain vibe—alternative comedy explores different types of material." In an interview with '' The A.V. Club'' after his performance in the 2011 comedy-drama film '' Young Adult'', Oswalt stated: I had come up out of that whole alternative scene, which was all about, "Don’t try it, man. Just go up and wing i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy
Comedy is a genre of fiction that consists of discourses or works intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, film, stand-up comedy, television, radio, books, or any other entertainment medium. The term originated in ancient Greece: in Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by political satire performed by comic poets in theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance pitting two groups, ages, genders, or societies against each other in an amusing ''agon'' or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions posing obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth then becomes constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to resort to ruses w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Onion Inc
''The Onion'' is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is based in Chicago but originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988 in Madison, Wisconsin. ''The Onion'' began publishing online in early 1996. In 2007, they began publishing satirical news audio and video online as the ''Onion News Network''. In 2013, ''The Onion'' ceased publishing its print edition and launched Onion Labs, an advertising agency. ''The Onion''s articles cover current events, both real and fictional, parodying the tone and format of traditional news organizations with stories, editorials, and man-on-the-street interviews using a traditional news website layout and an editorial voice modeled after that of the Associated Press. The publication's humor often depends on presenting mundane, everyday events as newsworthy, surreal, or alarming, such as "Rotation Of Earth Plunges Entire N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park. It became a parish in its own right in the late 17th century, when buildings started to be developed for the upper class, including the laying out of Soho Square in the 1680s. St Anne's Church was established during the late 17th century, and remains a significant local landmark; other churches are the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory and St Patrick's Church in Soho Square. The aristocracy had mostly moved away by the mid-19th century, when Soho was particularly badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. For much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation as a base for the sex industry in addition to its night life and its location for the headq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gong Show
''The Gong Show'' is an American amateur talent contest franchised by Sony Pictures Television to many countries. It was broadcast on NBC's daytime schedule from June 14, 1976, through July 21, 1978, and in first-run syndication from 1976 to 1980 and 1988 to 1989, and was revived in 2017 for broadcast on ABC. The show was created and originally produced by Chuck Barris, who also served as host for the NBC run and from 1977 to 1980 in syndication. Its most recent version was executive-produced by Will Arnett and hosted by Tommy Maitland, a fictional character performed by Mike Myers (uncredited in Season 1). ''The Gong Show'' is known for its absurdist humor and style, with the actual competition secondary to the often outlandish acts presented; a small cash prize has typically been awarded to each show's winner. Format Each show presented a competition of amateur performers of often dubious talent, with a panel of three celebrity judges. The original program's regular judges in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Comedy Store, London
The Comedy Store is a comedy club located in Soho, London, England, opened in 1979 by Don Ward and Peter Rosengard.Peter Rosengard's website Retrieved 2019-03-08. History Since 16 January 1925 's private members' club had leased the three top floors of 69 , , London (at the corner with ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dowie (humourist)
John Dowie (born 3 August 1950 in Birmingham) is a British comedian, musician and writer, often viewed as a pioneer of alternative comedy. He began performing stand-up comedy in 1969. Career Described as an "idiosyncratic original" and "lone pioneer", Dowie's "arthouse proto-alternative" work mixed parody, fantasy, impersonations and taboo topics. His innovative comic style led him to being seen by many comedians that followed such as Alexei Sayle, Tony Allen, Mark Steel, and Jeremy Hardy as a precursor to the alternative comedy wave that arrived a few years later., with comedy impresario Malcolm Hardee noting that Dowie's work predated even the founding of the Comedy Store. In particular, Dowie was credited with establishing observational humour as part of the new movement. In 1977 he toured with and influenced another alternative pioneer Victoria Wood. As well as writing songs and sketches with her, he is credited with helping her to develop her future trademark patter between ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Connolly
Sir William Connolly (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish actor, retired comedian, artist, writer, musician, and presenter. He is sometimes known, especially in his homeland, by the Scots nickname the Big Yin ("the Big One"). Known for his idiosyncratic and often improvised observational comedy, frequently including strong language, Connolly has topped many UK polls as the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. In 2022 he received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts. Connolly's trade, in the early 1960s, was that of a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer. He first sang in the folk rock band The Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty and Tam Harvey, with whom he stayed until 1974, before beginning singing as a solo artist. In the early 1970s, Connolly made the transition from folk singer with a comedic perso ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Cooper Clarke
John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet, who first became famous as a " punk poet" in the late 1970s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums. Around this time, he performed on stage with several punk and post-punk bands and continues to perform regularly. His recorded output has mainly relied on musical backing from the Invisible Girls, which featured Martin Hannett, Steve Hopkins, Pete Shelley, Bill Nelson, and Paul Burgess. Early life Clarke was born in Salford, Lancashire, in 1949. He lived in the Higher Broughton area of the city and became interested in poetry after being inspired by his English teacher, John Malone, whom he described as "a real outdoor guy, an Ernest Hemingway type, red blooded, literary bloke". During an April 2018 episode of Steve Jones' radio show ''Jonesy's Jukebox'', Clarke revealed one of his early inspirations to be the poet Sir Henry Newbolt, reciting from memory a portion of Newbolt's po ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lenny Bruce
Leonard Alfred Schneider (October 13, 1925 – August 3, 1966), known professionally as Lenny Bruce, was an American stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was renowned for his open, free-wheeling, and critical style of comedy which contained satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon in 2003. Bruce paved the way for counterculture-era comedians. His trial for obscenity was a landmark of freedom of speech in the United States. In 2017, ''Rolling Stone'' magazine ranked him third (behind Richard Pryor and George Carlin) on its list of the 50 best stand-up comics of all time. Early life Bruce was Jewish, born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Mineola, New York. He grew up in nearby Bellmore, and attended Wellington C. Mepham High School. According to his biography, during part of his high school years, he lived at Dengler's Farm on Wantagh Avenue in Wantagh, New York. His parents divorced be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mort Sahl
Morton Lyon Sahl (May 11, 1927 – October 26, 2021) was a Canadian-born American comedian, actor, and social satirist, considered the first modern comedian. Sahl pioneered a style of social satire that pokes fun at political and current event topics using improvised monologues and only a newspaper as a prop. Sahl spent his early years in Los Angeles and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area where he made his professional stage debut at the hungry i nightclub in 1953. His popularity grew quickly, and after a year at the club he traveled the country doing shows at established nightclubs, theaters, and college campuses. In 1960 he became the first comedian to have a cover story written about him by ''Time'' magazine. He appeared on various television shows, played a number of film roles, and performed a one-man show on Broadway. Television host Steve Allen said that Sahl was "the only real political philosopher we have in modern comedy". His social satire performances broke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sick Comedy
Sick comedy was a term originally used by mainstream news weeklies ''Time'' and ''Life'' to distinguish a style of comedy/satire that was becoming popular in the United States in the late 1950s. Foreword to the 1995 Italian edition of Bruce's book. Mainstream comic taste in the United States had favored more innocuous forms, such as the topical but (for the time) inoffensive one-liners in Bob Hope's routines. In contrast, the new comedy favored observational monologues, often with elements of cynicism, social criticism and political satire. As a guest at the first airing of the ''Playboy's Penthouse'' show in 1959, Lenny Bruce objected to a ''Time'' article indiscriminately grouping seven new comedians, labeling them as "sick comics". Also appears on the 2004 Bruce anthology ''Let The Buyer Beware'', Disc One, last track ''Lenny On Playboy's Penthouse (with Hugh Hefner & Nat "King" Cole)''.) (These were Lenny Bruce, political satirist Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, Jonathan Winters, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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