Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Booming Laughter: The New Era Of Experimental Comedy Shows, Oscar F. Gonzalez

Capstones

This project looks at the rise of experimental comedy shows in New York City. The comedy industry is in a second boom that caused an increase in variety shows that test performers 'writing and performance skills. I interview the producers of the shows, the comedians that perform in them to understand how they're challenged and the audience members who watched the show. I talk with historians and comedy experts on the history of the comedy industry and the neighborhood in New York City where it originated in.

https://oscarfgonzalez.com/2018/12/21/booming-laughter-the-new-era-of-experimental-comedy-shows/

Laughing At Ourselves: Music And Identity In Comedic Performance, Peter Trigg

Masters Theses

Standup comedy actively performs and engages with constructions of self and social identity, especially in terms of ethnic difference and the negotiation of American race relations. Musical comedy, wherein standup comedians perform song onstage, represents one facet of this expression that configures musical texts and expectations in the service of cultural observation and critique. Bo Burnham and Reggie Watts characterize two disparate approaches to the practice based on their aesthetic tastes, existential anxieties, and racial experiences. The two present their respective identities onstage in relation to a changing American political landscape of the early 21st century that has seen widespread …

Texts And Subtexts In Performing Blackness: Vernacular Masking In Key And Peele As A Lens For Viewing Paul Laurence Dunbar’S Musical Comedy, Spencer Kuchle

Doctoral Dissertations

When Kegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s sketch-comedy show Key & Peele took Comedy Central by storm in 2012, the perceived need by the comedians to “adjust their blackness” to gain social recognition became a recurring theme. Throughout their comedic performances, language becomes a proxy for identity, and Key and Peele’s parodic employment of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and linguistic variation serves to challenge notions of black authenticity, while emphasizing the absurdity of racial essentialism. An embodiment of Jonathan Rossing’s concept of emancipatory racial humor, Key and Peele’s comedy creates nonthreatening spaces that facilitate the contestation of cultural authority …

Drink Coke. Don’T Steal Movies: A Queer In Pursuit Of Laughter And Empathy, Ariel Violet Gillooly

Senior Projects Spring 2017

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.