Phil Wang Isn’t Trying to Be Political
Question: Can a comic talk about politics without it being political? What about race? Class? Sex? Gender? Sexuality? What differentiates jokes on a political (...
Category: Comics Talking Shop
These are my analyses of when comics talk about the craft: joke work. how to write and perform comedy, what is humorous, etc. Comics are explicitly saying something about comedy.
Collin Williams on Jokes and Outrage
A lot of ink & pixels is given to the question of what is or is not an appropriate topic for humor. Collin Williams, in an interview with Rachel Jensen of S...
Aakash Mehta’s Sometimes Contradictory World
Full disclosure: I find fodder for this Blog via both my stand-up persona’s Facebook feed, and a Google Alert for the term “stand-up comedy.” ...
Alex Stypula on Pushing the Envelope
It’s a common theme in discussions of comedy, which I haven’t yet gotten around to addressing here: Is comedy all about pushing the envelope, and at...
Leighann Lord on Relief and Laughter
It’s sad when I picture it. As some describe it, there are vast masses of people living in a state of constant psychological and emotional pressure, on t...
Tig Notaro on Comedy and Release
Though she gives a brilliant interview to Ashley Hoffman of Time (8/25/2017), Tig Notaro only briefly mentions something that touches on my theme here: the idea...
Daniel Fernandes on Comedy as Art
A lot of comics express (perhaps unknowingly) the idea that audiences are passive objects that they “make laugh,” and Daniel Fernandes is another on...
Michelle Wolf Isn’t Trying to Change the World
But perhaps she should be. I talk a lot on this blog about what comedy can do, and my main soapbox is that it can do whatever we let it do. If comics tried to...
Marlon Wayans on Truth in Stand-Up
I’ve talked a lot on this blog about whether stand-ups tell the truth about their lives. Of course some do, but most fudge a bit. Even among those who g...
Jeff Foxworthy and Tension Release
In an interview with Edward Pevos of MLive (8/22/2017), Jeff Foxworthy describes his theory of humor in a way that resonates with the Relief theory of humor: I ...