Comedy and Controversy
Scripting Public Speech

This Element discusses epistemic, pragmatic, and historical perspectives on experimental control in the life sciences.

Sarah Balkin (Author), Marc Mierowsky (Author)

9781009565356, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 30 January 2025

68 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 0.6 cm, 0.266 kg

''Comedy and Controversy' makes an excellent job of providing the latest contribution to a growing debate about the meaning of stand-up and its effect on the world, by considering not just the performance but also how it spills out into wider debates, including comedians critiquing each other's work.' Oliver Double, Theatre Research International

This is an Element book about stand-up comedy and public speech. It focuses on the controversies generated when the distinction between the two breaks down, when stand-up enters – or is pushed – into the public sphere and is interpreted according to the scripts that govern popular political and media rhetoric rather than the traditional generic conventions of comic performance. These controversies raise a larger set of questions about the comedian's public role. They draw attention to the intention of jokes and their effects in the world. And they force us to consider how the limits of comic performance – what can be said, by whom, and why – respond to, and can reshape, public discourse across changing media contexts.

1. Introduction: comic performance and public speech
2. Persona
3. Comic licence
References.

Subject Areas: Theatre studies [AN]