6 ms·

Glossary of Stand Up Comedy Terms

72 points by rfreytag 8y ago

fitzroy 8y ago
cached version: https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-upcomedy.com/glossary-of-stand-up-comedy-terms/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-upc...
stblack 8y ago
Thank goodness for reader view.
DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
I'm a big fan of stand-up. I love the old stuff a lot (Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Bill Bailey) and I'm happy to see so much emerging talent that has hit the scene in the past decade with smart+critical content. (Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham) My fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the "comedian's comedian" and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy him. ("Content Provider" is his latest show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw Stewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something that gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but it's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story). Lee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael Macintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has some great tips about writing vs not writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ incredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of the trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with "The Mighty Boosh" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is incredibly obscure but once hooked people usually either love it or hate it (it's hard to feel just partial about it).
- SquishyPanda23 8y ago
  Both of your links go to the same video, which is a panel at Davos. Edit: Here's a link to Content Provider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    oops, sorry - fixed, thanks
- mlevental 8y ago
  >Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham i don't mean to start a fight but neither of these comedians are even remotely smart or critical (re silverman the episode of louie on fx about marc maron where she describes her own humor as "gee did i do that" and burnham is a meme star). i'm surprised you appreciate pryor and lump them in with him. in my humble opinion you almost have to be poor and black to be funny these days because really good comedy is about transgression (with a few standout exceptions like mitch hedberg/steven wright) and there's nothing transgressive about people in power either taking pot shots or being purely critical. it's why dennis miller was never funny (and nor is bill mahr). you have to be outside of power for a criticism to be transgressive. this is why chappelle's last two standups were hollow - he's too fat, too rich, too comfortable. go back to first hbo special where he talks about the hypocrisy of the lewinsky scandal, or to his second (post chappelle show) special where he talks about incongruence of how the media treated elizabeth smart and erica pratt. in his most recent special his attempt to contextualize cosby drew eye rolls because it's quite plausible he himself will be eventually accused (this is not a statement about his moral character but simply his relationship to power). but of course it can't be purely criticism right - there has to be showmanship and surprises and vulnerability. i think hands down the funniest comic of the last 10 was patrice o neal. i've watched his last special probably 15 times and what i admire about him is that he gets you to be complicit in the transgression (e.g. the value of a white woman bit, gender roles in the office, relationship dynamics) by a sort of socratic dialogue where the you yourself actually (by virtue of acceding) deliver the punchline. he's also incredibly smart and vulnerable in that show in discussing his diabetes and similar challenges most people face with things like work ethic. sadly he died in 2011. and yes both chappelle and o neal are raucously vulgar but it's directly in the service of punchline, rather than the punchline itself. louis ck was an exception in that he was white and male and etc and still funny but only because he often identified with power (e.g. the picking white vs black joke). it was in that identification that you grew to trust him over course of the show and warmed up to the more absurd jokes (like fucking a dead kid and bag of dicks). he also was very clever in how he revealed the irrationality of culture (raising my kids gay and cutting grass around gay people on your lawn). but now (after his scandal) he's not relatable anymore. listen to his leaked special where he tries to pretend to be ashamed of not being as politically active as the parkland kids and it's hollow - you end up suspecting that he really doesn't empathize with them.
- JansjoFromIkea 8y ago
  Not sure obscure is the right word there, mighty boosh was pretty huge about a decade ago. Unless you mean the approach to the humor? Iirc Lee first got Fielding and Barrett working together when they worked on a show he done around 1997 but beyond even he would stress that it would be a stretch to give him credit for their successes. I dunno about saying Lee is on the fringes either, he's had 4 seasons of a show on BBC that only ended a couple of years ago. He's on the fringes relative to guys who aggressively court mass audiences but he's almost surprisingly popular for how arch be can be. It's hardly Daniel Kitson (a big favorite of Stewart Lee's who is well worth checking out) levels of critically adored but unknown.
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    yes ofc sorry, with "obscure" I didn't mean "not well known" or in any way negative. afaik TMB falls under surreal comedy and that was I was trying to say. Actually Noel Fielding himself has repeatedly called him an inspiration and "uncle of our comedy" so these aren't my words. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work. ->(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee#1989%E2%80%931993:_Stand-up_and_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee#1989%E2%80%931993:...) I think TMB stands on it's own and deserves credit for something that has never existed before in this way and I'd never suggest that they "got it handed to them" in any way. Lee, even he is famous now, will never fill an O2, Royal Albert Hall or Apollo. Unlike others you won't see him on Mock the Week, The big fat quizz, or any other panel show. I don't mean to say he doesn't cut it for that, but not doing these things seems to be part of his brand. He is actively trying to stay the underdog. How much this is Stewart Lee or just Stewart Lee the character talking, I can't say.
- 52-6F-62 8y ago
  Just rewatched Dylan Moran’s Monster bit, showing my girlfriend for the first time. It’s easy to find online, and one of my favourites. Seems to run in the tradition of David Allen (speaking of the old guys) a little bit, though maybe more sardonic.
- pen2l 8y ago
  So actually my one and only exposure to Stewart Lee was a clip of him dealing with a heckler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQod7j-Cak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQod7j-Cak And that was what won me over! Other comedians would insult the heckler... but his response, oh gosh. If it's too hard to understand, here's a little bit of the transcript of the end: STEW: "Huh? But, I can't do something else now." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "This is what I do. I can't-- There isn't-- There's not time..." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "...to construct a bespoke act based around you." [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "It doesn't give me any pleasure to have wasted your time. I genuinely apologize. I genuinely do, because I've been in that situation myself, with kids, where I've got a babysitter, and I've gone to something, and it's not what I'd hoped. I'm genuinely sorry. I can't really-- I can't really say any more than that." MAN: [INAUDIBLE] STEW: "What? I can't do what you want me to do. I can't do it." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "I'm genuinely-- I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've annoyed you. I'm sorry that you got here and it wasn't what you hoped. But I can't just change now. And also, you know, objectively, I have a mortgage and I have children. What I'm doing now, I'm seeing a degree of a financial return for it. And that feat-- I was going a long time since I started to break even. I was about 36, 37... ticked over, and... I mean, how long can I carry on working at this level? 10 years before it starts failing? I don't know. But it would be a gamble to ditch this..." [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "...to try and fulfill whatever it is you think I should do. Even if you're right, I've gone too far down this road to... I'm as a much a prisoner of my expectations of myself as you are of yours. And that is the common ground that we have. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "So, my wife had been away--" For my first time, I will now gladly watch the comedic bit by him
- yesenadam 8y ago
  Just watched Content Provider. (Have to be careful what I write here - am imagining Lee reading it out mockingly in his next show..) - great stuff. Thank you!!
gkoberger 8y ago
I've gotten really into standup, since it fills a weird niche. I love listening to people who care about their craft talk about it (like Jiro or Chef's Table, for example), however that's often hard to come by... except for comedians! Since their job is to talk, and they all tend to be pretty free during the day, there's thousands of hours of comedians talking about their craft online. If you're looking to get started with a podcast, I recommend WTF, You Made It Weird, Good One and The Old Ones. Guests worth listening to (on any podcast) are John Mulaney, Bo Burnham, Mike Birbiglia, Conan O'Brien [1], Bill Burr, Louis CK on WTF (I know I know), and Kumail Nanjiani/Emily Gordon. And all three Harris Wittels episodes of You Made It Weird are heartbreakingly worth listening to. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU...
- retsibsi 8y ago
  The Comedian's Comedian podcast (http://www.comedianscomedian.com/ http://www.comedianscomedian.com/) is another take on exactly that: comedians talking about their craft. The guests come from all over the world, but the host (Stuart Goldsmith) is English and so it skews a bit more in that direction. Recommended guests depend on your taste, but I think most people would find the Stewart Lee episode interesting. The Jimmy Carr episode was also very enjoyable -- surprisingly so to me, as I always considered his standup rather cynical, crude, mean-spirited. Getting a peek behind the curtain changed my perspective a bit. Of recent episodes, my favourite was probably the one with (Finnish stand-up comedian) Ismo. A couple of others that half-qualify: * Adam Buxton's podcast is much sillier and more of a banter/chat show, but a lot of his guests are comedians so they sometimes cover similar ground. * Richard Herring (Leicester Square Theatre Podcast) is at least as silly as Buxton and much cruder, but again, many of his guests are comedians and occasionally the conversation is surprisingly insightful.
defen 8y ago
Walk the room: Offend the audience so much or bomb so badly that everyone walks out.
thebesthacker 8y ago
I've heard comic groupies also referred to as "Chucklesluts"

72 points by rfreytag 8y ago

cached version: https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-upcomedy.com/glossary-of-stand-up-comedy-terms/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190202141614/https://stand-upc...

stblack 8y ago

Thank goodness for reader view.

DyslexicAtheist 8y ago

I'm a big fan of stand-up. I love the old stuff a lot (Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly, Bill Bailey) and I'm happy to see so much emerging talent that has hit the scene in the past decade with smart+critical content. (Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham) My fav one right now is Stewart Lee. He is often called the "comedian's comedian" and I think people here appreciate smart content so you might enjoy him. ("Content Provider" is his latest show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw Stewart Lee is incredibly smart without being overly offensive - something that gets old after some time (e.g. Jimmy Carr or Franky Boyle I both like but it's a bit shallow imo and lacks an overreaching arc in their story). Lee is more demanding than shows that are made for mass-audiences (Michael Macintyre, etc) and will probably always remain on the fringe. He also has some great tips about writing vs not writing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrXVaytvJtQ incredibly intelligent guy which seems to defy all the traditional rules of the trade. He also helped Noel Fielding and Julian Barrett become popular with "The Mighty Boosh" material at the Edinburgh fringe. (TMB is incredibly obscure but once hooked people usually either love it or hate it (it's hard to feel just partial about it).

SquishyPanda23 8y ago
Both of your links go to the same video, which is a panel at Davos. Edit: Here's a link to Content Provider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1UCt5iItcw
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  oops, sorry - fixed, thanks
mlevental 8y ago
>Sarah Silverman, Bo Burnham i don't mean to start a fight but neither of these comedians are even remotely smart or critical (re silverman the episode of louie on fx about marc maron where she describes her own humor as "gee did i do that" and burnham is a meme star). i'm surprised you appreciate pryor and lump them in with him. in my humble opinion you almost have to be poor and black to be funny these days because really good comedy is about transgression (with a few standout exceptions like mitch hedberg/steven wright) and there's nothing transgressive about people in power either taking pot shots or being purely critical. it's why dennis miller was never funny (and nor is bill mahr). you have to be outside of power for a criticism to be transgressive. this is why chappelle's last two standups were hollow - he's too fat, too rich, too comfortable. go back to first hbo special where he talks about the hypocrisy of the lewinsky scandal, or to his second (post chappelle show) special where he talks about incongruence of how the media treated elizabeth smart and erica pratt. in his most recent special his attempt to contextualize cosby drew eye rolls because it's quite plausible he himself will be eventually accused (this is not a statement about his moral character but simply his relationship to power). but of course it can't be purely criticism right - there has to be showmanship and surprises and vulnerability. i think hands down the funniest comic of the last 10 was patrice o neal. i've watched his last special probably 15 times and what i admire about him is that he gets you to be complicit in the transgression (e.g. the value of a white woman bit, gender roles in the office, relationship dynamics) by a sort of socratic dialogue where the you yourself actually (by virtue of acceding) deliver the punchline. he's also incredibly smart and vulnerable in that show in discussing his diabetes and similar challenges most people face with things like work ethic. sadly he died in 2011. and yes both chappelle and o neal are raucously vulgar but it's directly in the service of punchline, rather than the punchline itself. louis ck was an exception in that he was white and male and etc and still funny but only because he often identified with power (e.g. the picking white vs black joke). it was in that identification that you grew to trust him over course of the show and warmed up to the more absurd jokes (like fucking a dead kid and bag of dicks). he also was very clever in how he revealed the irrationality of culture (raising my kids gay and cutting grass around gay people on your lawn). but now (after his scandal) he's not relatable anymore. listen to his leaked special where he tries to pretend to be ashamed of not being as politically active as the parkland kids and it's hollow - you end up suspecting that he really doesn't empathize with them.
JansjoFromIkea 8y ago
Not sure obscure is the right word there, mighty boosh was pretty huge about a decade ago. Unless you mean the approach to the humor? Iirc Lee first got Fielding and Barrett working together when they worked on a show he done around 1997 but beyond even he would stress that it would be a stretch to give him credit for their successes. I dunno about saying Lee is on the fringes either, he's had 4 seasons of a show on BBC that only ended a couple of years ago. He's on the fringes relative to guys who aggressively court mass audiences but he's almost surprisingly popular for how arch be can be. It's hardly Daniel Kitson (a big favorite of Stewart Lee's who is well worth checking out) levels of critically adored but unknown.
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  yes ofc sorry, with "obscure" I didn't mean "not well known" or in any way negative. afaik TMB falls under surreal comedy and that was I was trying to say. Actually Noel Fielding himself has repeatedly called him an inspiration and "uncle of our comedy" so these aren't my words. Indeed, though Barratt and Fielding had worked together in the past, the first seeds of the Boosh were sown while working as part of Lee's Edinburgh show King Dong vs Moby Dick in which Barratt and Fielding played a giant penis and a whale, respectively. Lee returned the favour by going on to direct their 1999 Edinburgh show, Arctic Boosh, which remains the template for their live work. ->(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee#1989%E2%80%931993:_Stand-up_and_radio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Lee#1989%E2%80%931993:...) I think TMB stands on it's own and deserves credit for something that has never existed before in this way and I'd never suggest that they "got it handed to them" in any way. Lee, even he is famous now, will never fill an O2, Royal Albert Hall or Apollo. Unlike others you won't see him on Mock the Week, The big fat quizz, or any other panel show. I don't mean to say he doesn't cut it for that, but not doing these things seems to be part of his brand. He is actively trying to stay the underdog. How much this is Stewart Lee or just Stewart Lee the character talking, I can't say.
52-6F-62 8y ago
Just rewatched Dylan Moran’s Monster bit, showing my girlfriend for the first time. It’s easy to find online, and one of my favourites. Seems to run in the tradition of David Allen (speaking of the old guys) a little bit, though maybe more sardonic.
pen2l 8y ago
So actually my one and only exposure to Stewart Lee was a clip of him dealing with a heckler: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQod7j-Cak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZQod7j-Cak And that was what won me over! Other comedians would insult the heckler... but his response, oh gosh. If it's too hard to understand, here's a little bit of the transcript of the end: STEW: "Huh? But, I can't do something else now." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "This is what I do. I can't-- There isn't-- There's not time..." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "...to construct a bespoke act based around you." [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "It doesn't give me any pleasure to have wasted your time. I genuinely apologize. I genuinely do, because I've been in that situation myself, with kids, where I've got a babysitter, and I've gone to something, and it's not what I'd hoped. I'm genuinely sorry. I can't really-- I can't really say any more than that." MAN: [INAUDIBLE] STEW: "What? I can't do what you want me to do. I can't do it." [LAUGHTER] STEW: "I'm genuinely-- I'm sorry. I'm sorry I've annoyed you. I'm sorry that you got here and it wasn't what you hoped. But I can't just change now. And also, you know, objectively, I have a mortgage and I have children. What I'm doing now, I'm seeing a degree of a financial return for it. And that feat-- I was going a long time since I started to break even. I was about 36, 37... ticked over, and... I mean, how long can I carry on working at this level? 10 years before it starts failing? I don't know. But it would be a gamble to ditch this..." [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "...to try and fulfill whatever it is you think I should do. Even if you're right, I've gone too far down this road to... I'm as a much a prisoner of my expectations of myself as you are of yours. And that is the common ground that we have. [LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE] STEW: "So, my wife had been away--" For my first time, I will now gladly watch the comedic bit by him
yesenadam 8y ago
Just watched Content Provider. (Have to be careful what I write here - am imagining Lee reading it out mockingly in his next show..) - great stuff. Thank you!!

gkoberger 8y ago

I've gotten really into standup, since it fills a weird niche. I love listening to people who care about their craft talk about it (like Jiro or Chef's Table, for example), however that's often hard to come by... except for comedians! Since their job is to talk, and they all tend to be pretty free during the day, there's thousands of hours of comedians talking about their craft online. If you're looking to get started with a podcast, I recommend WTF, You Made It Weird, Good One and The Old Ones. Guests worth listening to (on any podcast) are John Mulaney, Bo Burnham, Mike Birbiglia, Conan O'Brien [1], Bill Burr, Louis CK on WTF (I know I know), and Kumail Nanjiani/Emily Gordon. And all three Harris Wittels episodes of You Made It Weird are heartbreakingly worth listening to. [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2eoAIsZClo4bnlNM3JCb0hoSlU...

retsibsi 8y ago
The Comedian's Comedian podcast (http://www.comedianscomedian.com/ http://www.comedianscomedian.com/) is another take on exactly that: comedians talking about their craft. The guests come from all over the world, but the host (Stuart Goldsmith) is English and so it skews a bit more in that direction. Recommended guests depend on your taste, but I think most people would find the Stewart Lee episode interesting. The Jimmy Carr episode was also very enjoyable -- surprisingly so to me, as I always considered his standup rather cynical, crude, mean-spirited. Getting a peek behind the curtain changed my perspective a bit. Of recent episodes, my favourite was probably the one with (Finnish stand-up comedian) Ismo. A couple of others that half-qualify: * Adam Buxton's podcast is much sillier and more of a banter/chat show, but a lot of his guests are comedians so they sometimes cover similar ground. * Richard Herring (Leicester Square Theatre Podcast) is at least as silly as Buxton and much cruder, but again, many of his guests are comedians and occasionally the conversation is surprisingly insightful.

defen 8y ago

Walk the room: Offend the audience so much or bomb so badly that everyone walks out.

thebesthacker 8y ago

I've heard comic groupies also referred to as "Chucklesluts"