Acomedian (femininecomedienne) orcomic is a person who seeks toentertain anaudience by making themlaugh. This may be done by tellingjokes, creatingamusing situations, acting foolishly, or employingprop comedy. A comedian who addresses an audience directly is called astand-up comedian.
A popular saying often attributed toEd Wynn states: "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny."[1] This draws a distinction between how much of thecomedy can be attributed to verbal content and how much to acting and persona.[citation needed]
Many comics achieve acult following while touring famous comedy hubs such as theJust for Laughs festival inMontreal, theEdinburgh Fringe, andMelbourne Comedy Festival inAustralia. Often a comic's career advances significantly when they win a notable comedy award, such as theEdinburgh Comedy Award (formerly the Perrier comedy award). Comics sometimes foray into other areas of entertainment, such as film and television, where they become more widely known (e.g.,Eddie Izzard,Lee Evans). A comic's stand-up success does not always correlate to a film's critical or box-office success.[citation needed]
Comedians can be dated back to 425 BC, whenAristophanes, a comic author, and playwright, wrote ancient comedic plays. He wrote 40 comedies, 11 of which survive and are still being performed. Aristophanes' comedy style took the form ofsatyr plays.[2]
The English poet and playwrightWilliam Shakespeare wrote many comedies. A Shakespearean comedy is one that has a happy ending, usually involving marriages between the unmarried characters, and a tone and style that is more light-hearted than Shakespeare's other plays.
In the modern era, as technology produced forms ofmass communications media, these were adapted to entertainment and comedians adapted to the new media, sometimes switching to new forms as they were introduced.
Some of the earliest commercial sound recordings were made by standup comedians such asCal Stewart, who recorded collections of his humorous monologues onEdison Records as early as 1898, and other labels until his death in 1919.[9]
Karno took Chaplin and Laurel on two trips to the United States to tour the vaudeville circuit. On the second one, they were recruited by the fledglingsilent film industry. Chaplin became the most popular screen comedian of the first half of the 20th century. Chaplin andStan Laurel were protégés ofFred Karno, the English theatre impresario of Britishmusic hall, and in his biography Laurel stated, "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie [Chaplin] and me all we know about comedy. He just taught us most of it".[10] Chaplin wrote films such asModern Times andThe Kid. His films still have a major impact on comedy in films today.[11]
Fields appeared in Broadwaymusical comedies, three silent films in 1915 and 1925, and insound films starting in 1926. The Marx brothers also made the transition to film in 1929, by way of two Broadway musicals.
Comedy is increasingly enjoyed online. Several comedians got their start through the internet such asBo Burnham. Comedians streaming videos of their stand-up includeBridget Christie,Louis C.K. andDaniel Kitson.
There are many established formats for jokes. One example is thepun or double-entendre, where similar words are interchanged.The Two Ronnies often used puns and double-entendre.[14]Stewart Francis andTim Vine are examples of current comedians who deploy numerous puns. Jokes based on puns tend to be very quick and easy to digest, which sometimes leads to other joke forms being overlooked, for example in the Funniest Joke of the Fringe awards. Other jokes may rely on confounding an audience's expectations through a misleading setup (known as a 'pull back and reveal' in the UK and a 'leadaway' in the US).[15]Ed Byrne is an example of a comedian who has used this technique.[15] Some jokes are based onad absurdum extrapolations, for example much ofRichard Herring andRoss Noble's standup.[16] Inironic humour there is an intentional mismatch between a message and the form in which it is conveyed (for example the work ofDanielle Ward). Other joke forms include observation (Michael McIntyre), whimsy (David O'Doherty), self-deprecation (Robin Williams) and parody (Diane Morgan).
In a January 2014 study, conducted in theBritish Journal of Psychiatry, scientists found that comedians tend to have high levels ofpsychotic personality traits. In the study, researchers analyzed 404 male and 119 female comedians fromAustralia,Britain, and theUnited States. The participants were asked to complete an online questionnaire designed to measure psychotic traits in healthy people. They found that comedians scored "significantly higher on four types of psychotic characteristics compared to a control group of people who had non-creative jobs." Gordon Claridge, a professor of experimental psychology at theUniversity of Oxford and leader of the study claimed, "the creative elements needed to produce humor are strikingly similar to those characterizing the cognitive style of people with psychosis—both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder."[17] However, labeling comedians' personality traits as "psychotic" does not mean that individual is a psychopath,[18][19] sincepsychopathy is distinct frompsychosis, and neither does it mean their behavior is necessarily pathological.
Forbes publishes an annual list of the most financially successful comedians in the world, similarly to theirCelebrity 100 list. Their data sources includeNielsen Media Research,Pollstar,Box Office Mojo andIMDb.[20] The list was topped byJerry Seinfeld from 2006 until 2015, who lost the title toKevin Hart in 2016.[21] In that year, the eight highest paid comedians were from the United States, includingAmy Schumer, who became the first woman to be listed in the top ten.[22] The top ten of 2016 are as follows:[a]
^Kippola, Karl M. (August 2012). "Conclusion: Affirming White Masculinity by Deriding the Other".Acts of Manhood: The Performance of Masculinity on the American Stage, 1828–1865. Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 176–77.doi:10.1057/9781137068774.ISBN978-1-349-34304-1.Thomas D. Rice (1808–1860) originated the Jim Crow character, inspiring the minstrel show, which evolved into one of the most popular forms of variety entertainment through the end of the century and into the first distinctly American form of theatrical entertainment ... In the 1840s and 50s, the Virginia and Christy Minstrels built upon Rice's success, formalizing a three-act structure of music and humor, variety entertainment, and scenes from plantation life (or burlesques of popular plays). Appealing across class lines, the minstrel show employed archetypal characters, created derogatory and fictitious pictures of African American males, and provided a lens through which whites viewed blacks ... Frederick Douglass described the purveyors of minstrel entertainment as 'filthy scum of white society, who have stolen from us a complexion denied to them by nature, in which to make money, and pander to the corrupt taste of their white fellow citizens.' Minstrelsy relied on the promise of presenting 'real' Southern life.
^Parker, Bethany (12 September 2008)."Probing Question: What are the roots of stand-up comedy?". Research.PennState News. University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved24 February 2019.American stand-up comedy has its beginnings in the minstrel shows of the early 1800s
^"Forms of Variety Theater". American Variety Stage: Vaudeville and Popular Entertainment: 1870–1920.Library of Congress (exhibit). Retrieved24 January 2021.[T]he minstrel show was the most popular form of public amusement in the United States from the 1840s through the 1870s. It virtually ended, in its original form, by 1896, although vestiges lasted well into the twentieth century. Much humor in later comedy forms originated in minstrelsy and adapted itself to new topics and circumstances. The minstrel show also provided American burlesque and other variety forms with a prototypical three-part format. The minstrel show began with a 'walk around' with a verbal exchange between the 'end' men and the interlocutor. An 'olio,' or variety section, followed. Finally, a one-act skit completed the show.
^Oliar, Dotan; Sprigman, Christopher (2008)."There's No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy".Virginia Law Review.94 (8): 1843.JSTOR25470605. Retrieved16 September 2020.Stand-up's early roots can also be traced back to minstrel, a variety show format based in racial stereotypes which was widely performed in America between the 1840s and the 1940s. Minstrel acts would script dedicated ad-lib moments for direct actor-audience communication: these spots often were used for telling quick jokes.
^abMcCabe, John. "Comedy World of Stan Laurel". p. 143. London: Robson Books, 2005, First edition 1975
^Hickerson, Jay.The Ultimate History of Network Radio Programming and Guide to All Circulating Shows. Hamden, Connecticut: Jay Hickerson, Box 4321, Hamden, CT 06514, second edition December 1992, page 92.
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