Portal:Comedy

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Introduction

In a modern sense, Comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, stand-up comedy, or any other medium of entertainment. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old." A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.

Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, thus alienating their audience from the object of their humor. Parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them.

Selected general articles

Convoi Exceptionnel by the Dutch company: Close-Act Theatre

Street theatre is a form of theatrical performance and presentation in outdoor public spaces without a specific paying audience. These spaces can be anywhere, including shopping centres, car parks, recreational reserves, college or university campus and street corners. They are especially seen in outdoor spaces where there are large numbers of people. The actors who perform street theatre range from buskers to organised theatre companies or groups that want to experiment with performance spaces, or to promote their mainstream work. It was a source of providing information to people when there were no sources of providing information like television, radio etc. Nowadays, street play is used to convey a message to the crowd watching it. Street play is considered to be the rawest form of acting, because one does not have a microphone or loud speakers.

Sometimes performers are commissioned, especially for street festivals, children's shows or parades, but more often street theatre performers are unpaid or gather some income through the dropping of a coin in a hat by the audience. Read more...
An impressionist or a mimic is a performer whose act consists of imitating sounds, the voice and mannerisms of people or animals. The word usually refers to a professional comedian/entertainer who specializes in such performances and has developed a wide repertoire of impressions, including adding to them, often to keep pace with current events. Impressionist performances are a classic casino entertainment genre.

Someone who imitates one particular person without claiming a wide range, such as a lookalike, is instead called an impersonator. In very broad contexts, "impersonator" may be substituted for "impressionist" where the distinction between the two is less important than avoiding confusion with the use of "impressionist" in painting and music. Read more...
American comedy films are comedy films produced in the United States. The genre is one of the oldest in American cinema; some of the very first silent movies were comedies, as slapstick comedy often relies on visual depictions, without requiring sound. With the advent of sound in the late 1920s and 1930s, comedic dialogue rose in prominence in the work of film comedians such as W. C. Fields and the Marx Brothers. By the 1950s, the television industry had become serious competition for the movie industry. The 1960s saw an increasing number of broad, star-packed comedies. In the 1970s, black comedies were popular. Leading figures in the 1970s were Woody Allen and Mel Brooks. One of the major developments of the 1990s was the re-emergence of the romantic comedy film. Another development was the increasing use of "gross-out humour". Read more...
The Scarborough Spa Orchestra, the last surviving professional seaside orchestra, gave a concert of light music in August 2009.

Light music is a generic term applied to "light" orchestral music, which originated in the 18th and 19th centuries and continues until the present day. Its heyday occurred during the mid‑20th century.

The style is a less "serious" form of Western classical music, featuring through-composed, usually shorter orchestral pieces and suites designed to appeal to a wider context and audience than concerti, symphonies and operas. The form was especially popular during the formative years of radio broadcasting, with stations such as the BBC Light Programme featuring a playlist largely consisting of light compositions. Read more...
This is a chronological list of comedy horror films. Read more...
A slap stick

Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity which exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. The term arises from a device developed during the broad, physical comedy style known as Commedia dell'arte in 16th Century Italy. The "slap stick" consists of two thin slats of wood, which make a 'slap' when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular Punch and Judy puppet show. Read more...
Sketch comedy comprises a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio or visual medium such as radio and television. Often sketches are first improvised by the actors and written down based on the outcome of these improv sessions; however, such improvisation is not necessarily involved in sketch comedy.

An individual comedy sketch is a brief scene or vignette of the type formerly used in vaudeville, and now used widely in comedy and variety shows, talk shows and some children's television series (such as Sesame Street). Warner Bros. Animation made two sketch comedy shows, including Mad and Right Now Kapow. Read more...
Slapstick films are comedy films where physical comedy that includes pratfalls, tripping, falling, are highlighted over dialogue, plot and character development. The physical comedy in these films contains a cartoonish style of violence that is predominantly harmless and goofy in tone.

Silent film had slapstick comedies that included the films starring Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Cops and Harold Lloyd. These comedians often laced their slapstick with social commentary while comedians such as Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges did not contain these social messages. Read more...
Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton enjoying a joke, in spite of their language differences

A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other word play such as irony, a logical incompatibility, nonsense, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition:

It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humor—the shaggy dog story is in a class of its own as an anti-joke; although presenting as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is a joke. Some humorous forms which are not verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes, slapstick and anecdotes. Read more...
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era but can also be found in cartoons. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe content which was an "alternative" to the mainstream of live comedy, which often involved racist and sexist material. In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. 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."

In an interview with The A.V. Club after his performance in the 2011 comedy-drama film Young Adult, Oswalt stated: Read more...
Bringing Up Baby (1938) is a screwball comedy from the genre's classic period.

Screwball comedy is a subgenre of comedy film that became popular during the Great Depression, originating in the early 1930s and thriving until the early 1940s. Many secondary characteristics of this genre are similar to film noir, but it distinguishes itself for being characterized by a female that dominates the relationship with the male central character, whose masculinity is challenged. The two engage in a humorous battle of the sexes, which was a new theme for Hollywood and audiences at the time. Other elements are fast-paced repartee, farcical situations, escapist themes, and plot lines involving courtship and marriage. Screwball comedies often depict social classes in conflict, as in It Happened One Night (1934) and My Man Godfrey (1936). Some comic plays are also described as screwball comedies. Read more...
Character comedy is a method or genre in which a comedian performs as though they were a character created by the comedian themselves. A good deal of comedians have enjoyed fame from character comedy. Read more...
Comédie-Française seen from the Place de l'Opéra

The Comédie-Française (French pronunciation: [kɔmedi fʁɑ̃sɛz]) or Théâtre-Français (IPA: [teatʁə fʁɑ̃sɛ]) is one of the few state theatres in France and is considered the oldest still-active theatre in the world. It is the only state theatre to have its own troupe of actors. The company's primary venue is the Salle Richelieu, which is a part of the Palais-Royal complex and located at 2 rue de Richelieu on the Place André-Malraux in the 1st arrondissement of Paris.

The theatre has also been known as the Théâtre de la République and popularly as "La Maison de Molière" (English: The House of Molière). It acquired the latter name from the troupe of the best-known playwright associated with the Comédie-Française, Molière. He was considered the patron of French actors. He died seven years before his troupe became known as the Comédie-Française, but the company continued to be known as "La Maison de Molière" even after the official change of name. Read more...
Comedy of menace is the body of plays written by David Campton, Nigel Dennis, N. F. Simpson, and Harold Pinter. The term was coined by drama critic Irving Wardle, who borrowed it from the subtitle of Campton's play The Lunatic View: A Comedy of Menace, in reviewing Pinter's and Campton's plays in Encore in 1958. (Campton's subtitle Comedy of Menace is a jocular play-on-words derived from comedy of manners—menace being manners pronounced with somewhat of a Judeo-English accent.) Read more...
Shock humour is a style of comedy intended to shock the audience. This can be achieved through excessively foul toilet humour, overt sexual themes, mocking of serious themes (otherwise known as black comedy), or through tactlessness in the aftermath of a crisis.

In radio, shock jocks use this brand of humour. In conservative communities, such risque broadcasting can cause controversy, such as Jim Quinn and Don Jefferson's "Stupid Human Tricks" segment of their late-1980s WBZZ-FM show. Read more...
The comedy of remarriage is a subgenre of American comedy films of the 1930s and 1940s. At the time, the Production Code, also known as the Hays Code, banned any explicit references to or attempts to justify adultery and illicit sex. The comedy of remarriage enabled filmmakers to evade this provision of the Code. The protagonists divorced, flirted with strangers without risking the wrath of censorship, and then got back together.

The genre was given its name by the philosopher Stanley Cavell in a series of academic articles that later became a book, Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cavell argues that the genre represented Hollywood's crowning achievement, and that beneath all the slapstick and innuendo is a serious effort to create a new basis for marriage centered on mutual love – religious and economic necessity no longer applying for much of the American middle class. Read more...
The commedia sexy all'italiana (lit. "sex comedy Italian style"), also known as commedia scollacciata or commedia erotica all'italiana, is a subgenre of Italian commedia all'italiana film genre. Read more...

Did you know...

... that the pianist Staffan Scheja had a well-publicized feud with comedian Jonas Gardell when he tried to teach Gardell how to play the violin in the series Stjärnorna på slottet?
... that Hari Kondabolu's documentary The Problem with Apu started as a one-minute comedy segment?
... that comedian Rachel Mohlin made her acting debut in the soap opera Vänner och fiender, appearing in 695 episodes?
... that Fear No Poverty, the "father of crosstalk", performed alongside a man who could make music with his nose?
... that Marjan Šarec started his career as a comedian, but was later elected Mayor of Kamnik and recently announced his candidacy for President of Slovenia?
... that Christopher John O'Neill, now a Broadway actor, was discovered by a casting director for The Book of Mormon while performing comedy at Edinburgh Festival Fringe?