Misch on Personas, Truth and Ethics
In his article for Splitsider.com (7/6/2017), comic, critic, writer and teacher David Misch notes that there is an idea (held by at least one professional criti...
Tag: persona
Update: Pastemagazine.com Interview with Deon Cole
Persona After reading this interview, I made some updates. The first is an update to post on Persona – where I talk about whether stand-ups “just b...
Chris Crespo, Comics with “Disabilities”
Inclusion [I’ve added this to my piece on “hot” funny women as the problem of inclusion is felt by People of Color and the differently-abled a...
Update: Elle.com’s 2017 Women in Comedy
Here’s something I came across recently that sparked an update to the post on Persona– where I talk about the idea of comics being themselves on-sta...
Mike Birbiglia on Jokes
I’ve been a fan of Mike Birbiglia for a long time now, bought his merchandise, watched all his specials and both his movies (Sleepwalk with Me, 2012 and D...
Persona
I’ve already written a bit on the documentary, Dying Laughing, but there’s a lot more to say there [plus, I transcribed quite a bit of stuff, so I&#...
Wise Fools Speaking Truth to Power
When talking about stand-up comedy, a lot of attention is given to the figure of the wise fool. This concept is traceable back to at least the middle ages (for...
Narrators: Unreliable and Discordant
The idea that we can influence people with words (rhetoric) depends on the notion that the speaker is who they appear to be and mean what they say. Scholars ca...
How to Write a Joke
Everything starts with the jokes. Until you’ve got material that consistently gets laughs, you’ve got nothing – and you need at least five mi...