City of Women

Two consecutive projects confirmed Tommy Tune’s vision and versatility. In 1981, Tune directed the American premiere of Caryl Churchill’s Cloud 9, his first non-musical. This “comedy of multiple orgasms,” as it was billed, featured a first act set in colonial Africa in 1880 and a second act in contemporary London a century later. Tune staged the first act with sketch-comedy speed and vaudeville humor, as the characters played out their sexual frustrations and transgressed boundaries of race and class. Once again, he used performance tropes of earlier eras to communicate a contemporary viewpoint. His direction of the second act was more somber and thoughtful as the characters, liberated from patriarchal oppression and allowed to express their sexuality freely, search for meaningful connections. While Cloud 9 was enjoying a long and successful run off-Broadway, Tune embarked on Nine, based on Federico Fellini’s film 8½, about a celebrated but creatively stalled Italian filmmaker. Tune insisted that the show be peopled by an all-female cast surrounding the filmmaker. On a stunning white-tiled spa setting made up of stationary boxes, the women—each dressed in black—were summoned from his mind and memories to comment upon and take part in the action. With Nine, Tune established a pattern of staging an entire show around a stationary obstacle (in this case, the boxes)––an obstacle he consistently overcame through imagination and daring. Nine was a stunning directorial achievement that solidified Tune’s stature as a creative mastermind of the Broadway musical.

Male parody, sketch comedy and cultural subversion : the work of Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith

"Male Parody, Sketch Comedy and Cultural Subversion" is a Master's thesis that analyzes the male performances of Canadian comedians Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith. Queer and feminist scholars suggest that subversive gender performance techniques such as camp can destabilize compulsory heteronormativity and binary gender constructions. Through the study of sketch comics Thompson, Mercer and Smith, it is evident that a range of masculine performances, both implicitly and explicitly in support of queer politics, are supported within popular comedy and Canadian maninstream media. The diverse comic techniques used by these actors prove effective in critiquing aspects of patriarchy, masculinity and heteronormativity as well as questioning essentialist assumptions behind social notions of hierarchy and marginality.

Male parody, sketch comedy and cultural subversion : the work of Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith

"Male Parody, Sketch Comedy and Cultural Subversion" is a Master's thesis that analyzes the male performances of Canadian comedians Scott Thompson, Rick Mercer and Steve Smith. Queer and feminist scholars suggest that subversive gender performance techniques such as camp can destabilize compulsory heteronormativity and binary gender constructions. Through the study of sketch comics Thompson, Mercer and Smith, it is evident that a range of masculine performances, both implicitly and explicitly in support of queer politics, are supported within popular comedy and Canadian maninstream media. The diverse comic techniques used by these actors prove effective in critiquing aspects of patriarchy, masculinity and heteronormativity as well as questioning essentialist assumptions behind social notions of hierarchy and marginality.

Parody and the Role of Song in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

This chapter deals with the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As Monty Python’s first full-length film, Holy Grail combines the sketch comedy style of the troupe with a loose interpretation of Arthurian legend. Although chock-full of anachronisms and outright mockery, Monty Python’s version of Arthurian legend nonetheless represents a valuable addition to the retellings of the story in the twentieth century. While the literature on the Holy Grail offers a foundation for considering the film as an adaptation of Arthurian legend, little work has been done on the film’s music and how it enhances the story. This chapter will emphasize the role of the music, especially the songs written by Neil Innes, arguing that they not only provide atmosphere but augment the narrative (such as it is). In this way, this chapter will also lay the groundwork for examining Holy Grail as the basis for Eric Idle’s later musical, Spamalot.

Racism’s Back Door: A Mixed-Methods Content Analysis of Transformative Sketch Comedy in the US from 1960-2000

Comedy that challenges race ideology is transformative, widely available, and has the potential to affect processes of identity formation and weaken hegemonic continuity and dominance. Outside of the rules and constraints of serious discourse and cultural production, these comedic corrections thrive on discursive and semiotic ambiguity and temporality. Comedic corrections offer alternate interpretations overlooked or silenced by hegemonic structures and operating modes of cultural common sense. The view that their effects are ephemeral and insignificant is an incomplete and misguided evaluation. Since this paper adopts Hegel’s understanding of comedy as the spirit (Geist) made material, its very constitution, and thus its power, resides in exposing the internal thought processes often left unexamined, bringing them into the foreground, dissecting them, and exposing them for ridicule and transformation. In essence, the work of comedy is to consider all points of human processing and related structuration as fair game. The phenomenological nature of comedy calls for a micro-level examination. Select examples from The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1968), The Richard Pryor Show (1977), Saturday Night Live (1990), and Chappelle’s Show (2003) will demonstrate representative ways that comedy attacks and transforms racial hegemony.

Battle of the sketches: Short form and feminism in the comedy mode

The screenwriting of sketch comedy and, in particular, how female writers of sketch comedy engage with this form to illuminate female experience, are topics not yet widely theorized. This article reviews the scholarship, in order to bring together histories, definitions and distribution of sketch comedy from which to investigate how this form of comedy screenwriting can contribute to feminisms that ‘engage openly and playfully with humor and irony as weapons of choice’ (Willet et al. 2012). Drawing on anecdotal accounts and available archives from A Black Lady Sketch Show (2019–present), French and Saunders (1987–present), Inside Amy Schumer (2013–present), Wood & Walters (1981–82) and others, this article considers these against the theories of writing sketch comedy to draw some conclusions on how this short form, combined with its most popular form of distribution, can accommodate multiple perspectives and serve their audiences. This article offers itself as a starting point in identifying the unique challenges and strategies for women writing sketch comedy, and the possibilities offered by the form more broadly, while highlighting the need for further empirical exploration of the creative practice of female sketch comedy writers, and further critical attention to short form comedy screenwriting.

Saturday Night Live

Since the 1970s, Saturday Night Live has proven itself to be one of television’s most influential programs. Lorne Michaels created the show and served as executive producer from 1975 to 1980, then again from 1985 until the present; during his absence, Jean Doumanian oversaw the 1980–1981 season and Dick Ebersol produced the show from 1981 until Michaels’ return. Drawing on the variety format, Saturday Night Live provides a unique window into contemporary US culture with its popular guest hosts and musical guests, topical humor, and live presentation. Its wealth of characters and catchphrases has made its way into the popular lexicon, while its impact can be detected in live comedy performances, film, and new media, as well as other television programs. This bibliography loosely organizes the major critical works of Saturday Night Live scholarship and journalism into seven categories: studies of the show’s structure and style; critiques of how it has represented various identities; firsthand accounts by former performers and writers; historical analyses of the show’s development, production, and place within the television industry; examinations of its response to and influence on the news media; critical studies of key performers during the show’s run; and, finally, discussions of the show’s effect on US political discourse. The scholarship in this bibliography crosses many areas within communication and media studies, revealing the ongoing importance of the show to our understanding of comedy, politics, and television. Using satire and sketch comedy to both scrutinize and send up American society and culture, the show remains an enduring institution.

Teenagers on Stage—The Comedy of Elaine May and Mike Nichols

Elaine May began her career as one half of a comedy duo in collaboration with Mike Nichols, before both ventured into their own projects in writing and directing. This chapter takes as its focus the capacity for this early partnership to satirise the social and cultural expectations of the late 50s and early 60s, and the development of May’s comedic voice through her association with Nichols. Drawing initially on early biographical information, this will centre primarily on an analysis of their early sketch comedy, and extending through to their (often uncredited) collaborations on Nichols’ later cinema. I will confront the ways that the May/Nichols partnership shaped the writing and comedic sensibilities of May’s career, and the role Mike Nichols played in the development of May’s own distinctive creative perspective.