Dawn Picken on Comedy and Laughter
Dawn Picken of the New Zealand Herald (7/21/2017), expresses a few common and scientific interpretations of comedy and laughter, but she also expresses a better...
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.
Is Tiffany Haddish Serious?
Tre’vell Anderson of the Los Angeles Times is doing double duty with his interviews: two articles in the same day feature his interview with Tiffany Haddi...
Mike Birbiglia on Getting Personal
Mike Birbiglia spoke to Bill Brownstein of the Montreal Gazette (7/14/2017) about getting personal. Getting personal is crucial in comedy. I feel that we’re liv...
Ron White on Entertaining
Just a quick one, so I’ll pair it with another “theory-theory” piece. In an interview with Robert DiGiacomo of Atlanticcityweekly.com (7/18/20...
Lynne Parker and Comic Frames
In an interview with Hannah Williams of Backstage.com (7/13/2017), producer Lynne Parker says a few interesting things about stand-up and humor more generally. ...
Elahe Izadi on the Benefits and Evils of Technology
When I teach courses on media theory, I like to point out that whenever a new technology appears, there are some that hail it as the thing that will finally spa...
Elahe Izadi on the Current Stand-Up Comedy Boom
Elahe Izadi, in an article for the Washington Post (7/13/2017), talks about the current “stand-up comedy boom.” Never before has so much original ma...
Ricky Gervais on Provoking Thought
In an interview with Larry Fitzmaurice of Vice.com (7/12/2017), Ricky Gervais has a lot to say about comedy and even people. All the same? Gervais says that his...
Joe Stapleton on Spontaneity and Hecklers
In an interview with Paul Seaton of Pokernews.com (7/10/2017), Joe Stapleton had several things to say about stand-up: It’s rehearsed On Spontaneity in st...
Update: James Davis’ Interview with StarTribune.com
On reading the interview, I made some updates to Intentionality – where I talk about the idea that comics are first and foremost trying to get a laugh on-...