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Concept
Stand-up comedy
Summary
Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, comic, or stand-up. It is usually a rhetorical performance but many comics employ crowd interaction as part of their set or routine.
Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, observations or a shtick that may incorporate props, music, magic tricks, impressions or ventriloquism. It can be performed almost anywhere including comedy clubs, comedy festivals, bars, nightclubs, colleges or theatres however it is best suited to the controlled environment of a purpose built comedy club.
History of stand-up comedy
Stand-up as a Western art form has its roots in the stump speech of American minstrel shows, which featured an actor in blackface delivering nonsensical monologue to the audience. While the intention of stump speeches was to mock African-Americans, they also occasionally contained political and social satire. The minstrel show would later influence theatrical traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as vaudeville and burlesque.
Charles Farrar Browne (April 26, 1834 – March 6, 1867) was an American humor writer, better known under his nom de plume, Artemus Ward, which as a character, an illiterate rube with "Yankee common sense", Browne also played in public performances. He is considered to be America's first stand-up comedian.
The first documented use of "stand-up" as a term was in The Stage in 1911, detailing a woman named Nellie Perrier delivering 'stand-up comic ditties in a chic and charming manner', though this was used to describe a performance of comedy songs rather than stand-up comedy in its true modern form.
In The Yorkshire Evening Post on November 10, 1917, the "Stage Gossip" column described the career of a comedian named Finlay Dunn. The article stated that Dunn was "what he calls 'a stand-up comedian'" during the latter part of the 19th century, although the term may have been used retrospectively.
Official source
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