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Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style ofcomedy[1][2] that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era.[3] 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 stand-up of the day which took place inworking men's clubs, and was characterised by unoriginal gags often containing elements ofsexism andracism.[4][ambiguous] In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence ofjokes withpunch lines.[5]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."[6]
In an interview withThe A.V. Club after his performance in the 2011comedy-drama filmYoung 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 it." I think a lot of that comes from insecurity. It's that fashion of improv and amateurism that comes from the insecurity of saying to the audience, "Well, it doesn't matter if it doesn't go well, because I didn't even try that hard to begin with." It's like, "Oh, that's why you're not [trying]. If you actually tried hard and it sucked, then you've got to blame yourself." So that's what makes it hard for some people to sit down and actually just do the fucking work, because doing the work means you're making a commitment.[7]
Alternative comedy had a number of influences. It was a reaction against the mainstream stand-up of the day which took place inworking men's clubs, and was characterised by unoriginal gags often containing elements ofsexism andracism. Positive influences include American'sick' comedians of the 1950s and 1960s, likeMort Sahl andLenny Bruce; the 1960s comedianJohn Paul Joans, who had been influenced by Bruce;[8] thepunk scene of the late 1970s; poets likeJohn Cooper Clarke; and less conventional earlier comedians likeBilly Connolly andJohn Dowie.[9]
The beginning of alternative comedy is commonly associated with the opening of theComedy Store club in London on 19 May 1979, initially a weeklygong show-style comedy night in a room above a strip club inSoho. The official history of the club credits comedian and authorTony Allen[4] with coining the term. However, in his autobiography, the lateMalcolm Hardee claims to have coined the term in 1978.[10]
Alternative comedy came to describe an approach tostand-up comedy that was neither racist nor sexist, defining itself against more traditional comedians playing the Northern working men's clubs who often relied on jokes targeting women and minorities in a form of comedy "civil war".[11][12] (This divide was not absolute, with some performers from that circuit performing at the Comedy Store from its opening in May 1979.)[13] What developed from these clashes was, inArthur Smith's words, "comedy's version of punk".[14]
Alexei Sayle, the Comedy Store's firstMC, provided angry character comedy satirising the left.Arnold Brown, an older stand-up comic noted for his quick-witted,observational style, was revered by several alternative comedians, and would become a regular fixture at The Comedy Store. Fellow MC Tony Allen broke the taboos of personal and sexual politics, whileKeith Allen confronted audiences in a fearless[tone] series of "put-ons" and was a big influence on the earlycabaret scene that was about to emerge.[15] As these newer comics grew in confidence, Tony Allen and Alexei Sayle foundedAlternative Cabaret,[16] with other Comedy Store regulars. Their aim was to establish several alternative comedy clubs in London in addition to their flagship venue at theElgin, Ladbroke Grove, from August 1979. Its core members were Jim Barclay,Andy De La Tour, andPauline Melville, stand-ups who shared a background in radical fringe theatre.[17] The pair also brought alternative stand-up to theEdinburgh Festival for the first time in August 1980[18] with "Late Night Alternative" at the Heriot-Watt Theatre.[19] Returning with a full show in 1981, "Alternative Cabaret" was the critical comedy hit of that year.[12]
The Comedy Store now advertised itself as "The Home of Alternative Comedy"[20] in London's weekly Entertainment Guide,Time Out, listing "Alternative Cabaret" as its main show.[21] Their tours established the idea of running comedy shows in small venues around London, and sowed the seeds of the network of pub-based gigs that grew in the capital and across the UK throughout the 1980s.[11] The new comedy got its own section, "Cabaret", in Listings magazines, first inCity Limits followed byTime Out on 21 January 1983.[22] Other organisations, comics, and entrepreneurs—including Maria Kempinska'sJongleurs and Roland and Clare Muldoon's CAST/New Variety—added more regular venues, bringing the number of gigs per week from 24 in 1983 to 69 by 1987.[23]
Meanwhile, another group of comics left the Comedy Store withPeter Richardson to formThe Comic Strip and run their own "Comedy Cabaret" shows at the Boulevard Theatre, Walkers Court, Soho in October 1980.[24] The Comic Strip, featuring double acts and sketch comedy, consisted ofManchester University andRoyal Central School graduatesAde Edmondson,Rik Mayall,Nigel Planer,Dawn French, andJennifer Saunders, who began to aim their talents at television. AsThe Comic Strip Presents, the group made over 40 television films for bothChannel 4 andBBC.
Ben Elton, who had by then become the Comedy Store's next MC, was invited by Rik Mayall to join him as co-writer of BBC2's TV hit sitcomThe Young Ones. It was then as MC of Channel 4's new comedy showSaturday Live that Elton found fame as a performer in his own right. As author William Cook noted, "AfterThe Young Ones made him Alternative Comedy's hidden voice,Saturday Live (Channel 4) made him its most visible face."[4]
Comic and broadcaster Arthur Smith observed that "If Tony Allen, 'The Godfather of Alternative Comedy', was the theory of anarchic comedy, then Malcolm Hardee was its cock-eyed embodiment".[12] Hardee was the much loved MC at the Tunnel Palladium, The Mitre, Deptford 1984-89 whose audience were famous for their vocal participation and wit.[tone] There he influenced the early careers ofVic Reeves andBob Mortimer,Simon Day,Chris Lynam, Martin Soan,Harry Enfield, and many others to whom he gave their first gigs. He also found fame himself as part ofThe Greatest Show on Legs, which had been started by Martin Soan, his part in the legendary "Naked Balloon Dance" as well as his many shows and pranks at The Edinburgh Festival.[10]
Just about every major British stand-up comedian in the last thirty years started their career in alternative comedy clubs, including Ben Elton,Jo Brand,Jack Dee,Lee Evans,Eddie Izzard,Harry Hill,Peter Kay,Jimmy Carr, andRoss Noble.[25]
Alternative comedy has enjoyed a resurgence in the UK since about 2010, withStewart Lee promoting the liberal, progressive values of the 1980s alternative comedy scene through his writing, live shows featuring veteran alternative comedians includingAlexei Sayle andNorman Lovett, as well as aComedy Central TV series showcasing a great variety of alternative acts,The Alternative Comedy Experience. Younger acts have banded together into groups dedicated to alternative comedy, includingThe Alternative Comedy Memorial Society andThe Weirdos Collective.
In New York City, much of what is called alternative or "downtown comedy"[26] is performed outside of traditional comedy clubs in theatres, such asUpright Citizens Brigade Theatre (UCB),Magnet Theater, The Creek and The Cave,[27] and thePeoples Improv Theater (PIT), as well as cabarets that host comedy only occasionally. The comedians at these shows offer character-based humour orsurreal humour, as opposed toobservations of everyday life or more polemical themes.[28] In addition, many alternative comics such asDemetri Martin and Slovin andAllen use unusual presentation styles, opting to play music, givePowerPoint presentations, or act out sketches.[26] Many alternative comics such asSarah Silverman,Janeane Garofalo, andTodd Barry also perform in mainstream comedy venues. The now-defunctLuna Lounge in New York'sLower East Side was home to a celebrated weekly alternative comedy stand-up series called "Eating It" from 1995 to 2005, co-created by Garofalo, which featured a changing line-up includingLouis CK,Jim Norton,Ted Alexandro,Todd Barry,H. Jon Benjamin,Greg Giraldo,Patrice O'Neal,Patton Oswalt,Sarah Vowell,Mike Birbiglia,Marc Maron,Dave Chappelle,Roseanne Barr,Sarah Silverman,Janeane Garofalo, and numerous others, until the property was sold and the building razed.
Eugene Mirman started a show called Invite Them up at Rififi, a bar in New York's East Village in 2002. The popular weekly show, co-hosted by Bobby Tisdale, never advertised or listed its performers. Comedians such asDemetri Martin,Aziz Ansari,Pete Holmes,Jon Glaser,Jon Daly,Reggie Watts and musicians such asBright Eyes andYo La Tengo all performed on Invite Them Up. The show spurred a host of other weekly events at Rififi hosted byNick Kroll,John Mulaney,Greg Johnson,Larry Murphy andJenny Slate. The venue was a hotbed of alternative comedy until complaints from neighbors about one of Rififi's dance parties, Trash, got the bar closed down in 2008.
Warren St. John said that the "inspiration" for alternative comedy in New York City is theUpright Citizens Brigade. The group originally formed at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Chelsea in 1999.[26] Four years later, in 2003, several performers at the UCB spun off their own theater, and formed the PIT. St. John also argues that one reason why unusual comics can succeed in New York City is that they don't have to tour part-time, as many of them also work as writers on local comedy television shows such asThe Daily Show and theLate Show with David Letterman.[26]
Patton Oswalt citedDana Gould as the originator of the alternative comedy scene in the early nineties, who also citesJaneane Garofalo as another progenitor of the scene.Beth Lapides started theUn-Cabaret shows, which was the flagship of the alternative comedy movement.[29] Other contemporaries of the scene includedBob Odenkirk,David Cross,Greg Behrendt,Andy Kindler, andKathy Griffin.[30]
Oswalt was essential in pioneering the alternative comedy on the West Coast. He createdThe Comedians of Comedy tour, which played across the US in independent music venues intermittently from 2004 to 2008. The original tour was hosted by Oswalt, and featuredMaria Bamford,Zach Galifianakis, andBrian Posehn.
The Experimental Comedy Club inPerth, Western Australia was founded by Xavier Susai of Grassroots Comedy,[31] during theCOVID-19 pandemic, as a safe space for comedians to try new styles and material, without being perceived as an audition for professional comedy nights.[32] Visiting comedians from around the world such asMark Normand andStephen K. Amos have dropped in to perform at this room.
Canada has a history of embracing alternative stand-up and sketch comedy.The ALTdot COMedy Lounge has been running for more than 20 years atThe Rivoli, whereThe Kids in the Hall also had a residency in the mid-1980s.[33] Other notable alternative comedy shows now defunct includedPirate Video Cabaret (ended 2003),Laugh Sabbath andThe Second City Theater Toronto'sSketchy at Best. Other notable alt acts include Terry Clement,Sean Cullen,Jon Dore, Paul Irving,Chris Locke,Levi Macdougall,Ron Sparks andHarland Williams.
While South African comedy often comprises racial orstereotype-based humour[citation needed], alternative comedy in South Africa tends to avoid such subject matter. It is hard to define alternative comedy, but subject matter may include taboo, dark, non sequitur, geek, and various other topics, whilst excluding racial, scatological, stereotype, South Africanised humour and other topics considered mainstream. Although comedians of this genre may include mainstream topics, it does not form the majority of their sets.
It is hard to say exactly where it started, but The Underground in Melville Johannesburg was known for its risqué humour proliferated by founderJohn Vlismas. The Comedy Underground[34] was fertile development ground for alternative humour with its anything goes policy. Since its closure in 2010, alternative comedy has found new venues includingFoxwood theatre, Picollinos, and various others. Johannesburg remains the home of South African alternative.
One of the driving forces behind the increasing prominence of alternative comedy is the Johannesburg Comedy Cartel,[35] whose members includeShaun Wewege,[36]Warren Robertson,Vittorio Leonardi, andAlyn Adams. Other South African comedians who fall into the genre includeDale Amler,Roni Modimola, Mark Banks, and Vlismas.[37]
Mel Miller is arguably considered one of the pioneers of the alternative genre in South Africa. During theApartheid era, Miller's material was considered "inappropriate" or radical, resulting in more than one run-in and detention with theSouth African Bureau of State Security.
At a time when "alternative comedy" is increasingly showing itself to be little other than a more aggressive version of the old comedy, the National Theatre of Brent are offering a style that is entirely original.
Alternative comedy is nothing new. The term gained fame in 1980s Britain, when out-of-the-ordinary sitcoms likeThe Young Ones orAbsolutely Fabulous popped up, and continued in America with unorthodox sketch comedy groups such as Manhattan'sUpright Citizen's Brigade. But, according to [Andrea Rosen of the 'Pie Hole Comedy Show' in Brooklyn, New York], alternative comedy predates all of those acts. 'Mel Brooks was an alternative comic,' said Rosen, citing his famous2000-Year-Old Man routine. 'So isSteve Martin.' And Rosen's influences also include old masters like filmmakerWoody Allen, who started his career as a standup. 'There's a whole world of alternative comedy rooms, in bars and basements.'
'Alternative' comedy is inevitably difficult to define, not least because it tends, after an interval, to join the mainstream.
Stylistically, American alternative comedy is, as one journalist wrote, 'hard to define and frequently in flux,' but like its UK equivalent, it tends to be loose, quirky, folksy, homemade, autobiographical, politically liberal and full of geeky pop culture references, with gags about comic books or cultish punk bands.
Bars and back rooms in the East Village and Lower East Side are overflowing these days with the likes of Adolf Dice Hitler Clay: not spoofs of Nazis necessarily, but rather a wave of young and creative comics who are branching out from straight stand-up to eccentric sketch and character-based humor that owes more toDa Ali G Show than toGeorge Carlin....Any attempt to define the term alternative comedy was doomed, [Andrés] du Bouchet said before his Tuesday night show, but he gave it a shot anyway. "Alternative is a catchall phrase for 'notstand-up,' " he said. Aziz Ansari, 22 and an up-and-coming comic on the scene, elaborated. "The alternative rooms give you an outlet to explore something other than straight stand-up," he said. "You can do characters. I can bring a girl on stage that I got rejected by and interview her, or do aPowerPoint presentation or show a short film. The nature of the venues allows you to experiment."
