Description
Book SynopsisTHE FIRST EXAMINATION OF STAND-UP COMEDY THROUGH THE LENS OF FOLKLOREIn A Vulgar Art Ian Brodie uses a folkloristic approach to stand-up comedy, leveraging the discipline''s central method of studying interpersonal, artistic communication and performance. Because stand-up comedy is a rather broad category, people who study it often begin by relating it to something they recognize such as literature or theatre, and analyze it accordingly. A Vulgar Art begins with a more fundamental observation: someone is standing in front of a group of people, talking to them directly, and trying to make them laugh. So this book takes the moment of performance as its focus and shows that stand-up comedy is a collaborative act between the comedian and the audience.Although the form of talk on the stage resembles talk among friends and intimates in social settings, stand-up comedy remains a profession. As such, it requires performance outside of the comedian''s own community to gain larger and larger aud
