Performing Arts: Comedy

In recent decades, some of the most celebrated and culturally influential American oratorical performances have come not from political leaders or ...

Jewish humor, with its rational skepticism and cutting social criticism, permeates American popular culture. Scholars of humor--from Sigmund Fre...

Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel—these comedians are household names whose satirical takes on politics, the news, and c...

This accessible and engaging text covering sketch, sitcom and comedy drama, alongside improvisation and stand-up, brings together a panoply of tool...

'Terrific. So funny' Zadie Smith 'Monstrously depressing but so comic and well observed that I didn't really mind .... It is great' Dolly Aldert...

This volume highlights the variety of forms comedy took in England, with reference to developments in Europe, particularly France, during the Europ...

Drawing together contributions from scholars in a range of fields within 19th- and 20th-century cultural, literary, and theater studies, this volum...

He talks about going to Switzerland, to that place where you pay them to kill you… And I say “go! It’ll do you good. Broaden your horizons…you’ve n...

Drawing together contributions by scholars from a variety of fields, including theater, film and television, sociology, and visual culture, this vo...

Comedy and humor flourished in manifold forms in the Middle Ages. This volume, covering the period from 1000 to 1400 CE, examines the themes, pract...

Drawing together scholars with a wide range of expertise across the early modern period, this volume explores the rich field of early modern comedy...

Work is a joke. Laughing at it is political.Humor, Groucho Marx asserted, is “reason gone mad.” For Walter Benjamin, laughter was “the most revolut...

Winner! 2006 Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival National Student Playwriting Award Winner! 2006 Paula Vogel Award Kennedy Center Amer...

Winner! 2005 Samuel French Canadian Playwrights Contest Isobel Lomax and Dolly Biddle are two "mature" cable-access cooking show hostesses who have...