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Characterization in Stand-up Comedy: from Ted Ray to Billy Connolly, via Bertolt Brecht

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Oliver Double
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Abstract

Stand-up comedy is often distinguished from straight acting by its apparent lack of characterization – the comedian appearing onstage apparently as him or herself. But within gags and routines, comics often briefly take on the voice and posture of the characters they describe. Here Oliver Double contrasts the approach of two comedians of different generations – Ted Ray and Billy Connolly – to this technique of ‘momentary characterization’. He notes the links between Connolly's conversational approach and Brecht's notions of acting, and goes on to examine the broader questions of comic personae, representation of the self, and the changing performance conventions within British stand-up comedy. Oliver Double is an ex-comedian who now lectures at the University of Kent at Canterbury.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 16 , Issue 4 , November 2000 , pp. 315 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes and References

1. In fact, in the early days of alternative comedy, there were comics (like Keith Allen) who deliberately tried not to make the audience laugh. However, this does not contradict the idea that the intention to provoke laughter is a definitive feature of stand-up. The point is that Allen was deliberately unfunny as an act of rebellion, an attempt to disrupt the audience's preconceptions (or perhaps just to annoy them). Such rebellion would have been meaningless if funniness was not a defining feature.

2. Harrop, John, Acting (London; New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Marc, David, Comic Visions (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), p. 13Google Scholar.

4. Ray, Ted, Ray's a Laugh, BBC Radio Collection, ZBBC1117, 1990Google Scholar.

5. Ray, Ted, Raising the Laughs (London: Werner Laurie, 1952), p. 69Google Scholar.

6. Lane, Lupino, How to Become a Comedian (London: Frederick Muller, 1945)Google Scholar.

7. Lane, p. 14.

8. Ibid., p. 15.

9. Ibid. p. 71.

10. Ibid, p. 135.

11. Billy Connolly's World Tour of Scotland, BBC-1, 16 August 1994, 10.25 pm.

12. Willett, John, ed., Brecht on Theatre (London: Methuen, 1978), p. 123Google Scholar.

13. Elton, Ben, Motormouth (Phonogram, BENLP1, 1987)Google Scholar, side 1.

14. Willett, p. 193–4.

15. Brecht, Bertolt, Poems, ed. Willett, John, Manheim, Ralph (London: Methuen, 1976), p. 341Google Scholar.

16. Willett, p. 194.

17. Lane, p. 12–19.

18. Ray, p. 66.

19. Ibid., p. 67.

20. Ibid., p. 66–7.

21. Other notable folk comics include Jasper Carrott, Max Boyce, and Mike Harding.

22. Margolis, Jonathan, The Big Yin (London: Orion, 1995)Google Scholar.

23. Billy Connolly's World Tour of Scotland.

24. See Double, Oliver, Stand-Up: on Being a Comedian (London: Methuen, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for more details on this.