History of stand-up comedy
[11][12] With the turn of the twentieth century and spread of urban and industrial living, the structure, pacing and timing, and material of American humor began to change.
[13][14] Comedians of this era often depended on fast-paced joke delivery, slapstick, outrageous or lewd innuendo, and donned an ethnic persona—African, Scottish, German, Jewish—and built a routine based on popular stereotypes.
[15] During the stand-up eras of minstrel, vaudeville, and burlesque, jokes were generally considered to be in the public domain and humorous material was widely shared, appropriated, and stolen.
The founders of modern American stand-up comedy include Moms Mabley, Jack Benny, Bob Hope, George Burns, Fred Allen, Milton Berle and Frank Fay, all of whom came from vaudeville or the Chitlin' Circuit.
[24][25] Acts such as Alan King, Danny Thomas, Martin and Lewis, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers and Jack E. Leonard flourished in these venues.
In the 1950s and into the 1960s, "new wave"[26] stand-ups such as Mort Sahl and Lord Buckley began developing their acts in small folk clubs like San Francisco's hungry i (owned by impresario Enrico Banducci and origin of the ubiquitous "brick wall" behind comedians)[27] or New York's Bitter End.
[28][29][30] These comedians added an element of social satire and expanded both the language and boundaries of stand-up, venturing into politics, race relations, and sexual humor.
[31] After Lenny Bruce, arrests for obscene language on stage nearly disappeared until George Carlin was arrested on 21 July 1972 at Milwaukee's Summerfest after performing the routine "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television"[32] Carlin's act was ruled indecent but not obscene, and the Supreme Court granted the FCC permission to censor in a 5–4 ruling from FCC v. Pacifica Foundation.
Some Black American comedians such as George Kirby, Bill Cosby, Flip Wilson, Godfrey Cambridge, and Dick Gregory began exploring the criticism of "history and myth" in the 1950s–60s, with Redd Foxx testing the boundaries of "uncensored racial humor".
[34] The older style of stand-up comedy (no social satire) was kept alive by Rodney Dangerfield and Buddy Hackett, who enjoyed revived careers late in life.
Don Rickles, whose legendary style of relentless merciless attacks on both fellow performers and audience members alike kept him a fixture on TV and in Vegas from the 1960s all the way to the 2000s, when he appeared in the wildly popular Pixar Toy Story films as Mr.
Television programs such as Saturday Night Live and The Tonight Show helped publicize the careers of other stand-up comedians, including Janeane Garofalo, Bill Maher and Jay Leno.
[40] Official recognition of present-day stand-up comedians comes from the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the New York Friars Club roasts, and The Andy Kaufman Award.
[41] The oldest stand-up comic seems to be Herbert Falk, born May 30, 1921,[42] who performed at the Laughing Skull Comedy club in Atlanta when he was 99 yrs old on Jan 23, 2020.
By stroke of fortune, he skirted death in WWII, volunteering to remove land mines under fire,[43] only to be happier delivering stand-up 77 years later.
Among the early pioneers of the later German comedy scene can be counted Loriot, Heinz Erhardt, Otto Waalkes, Dieter Hallervorden or Karl Dall.
[47][48][49] Notable front-cloth comics who rose through the variety theatre circuit were Morecambe and Wise, Arthur Askey, Ken Dodd and Max Miller.
Some of the earliest successes came from folk clubs, where performers such as Billy Connolly, Mike Harding and Jasper Carrott started as relatively straight musical acts whose between-song banter developed into complete comedy routines.
The 1960s had also seen the satire boom, including the creation of the club, the Establishment, which, amongst other things, gave British audiences their first taste of extreme American stand-up comedy from Lenny Bruce.
[citation needed] In terms of live comedy in Mexico [es], the predecessors of this comic style are: The new generation of comedians decided to use their own lives as the theme of their comedy, imitating the American style: The one-man-show genre, which is similar, but allows other approaches (enacting characters, songs and scenes) was introduced in Brazil by José Vasconcellos in the 60's.
Although the origins of this genre can be traced back to the monologues of Miguel Gila in the 1950s, the rise of live comedy in Spain took a long time in comparison with the American continent.
Modern stand-up comedy in India is a young art form, however Chakyar koothu was prominent in Trivandrum and southern Kerala during the 16th and 17th centuries.
[citation needed] In 1986, India's Johnny Lever performed in a charity show called "Hope 86", in front of the whole Hindi film industry as a filler and was loved by audience.
Around 2008–2009, two other popular comedians Papa CJ and Vir Das returned to India and started making their marks on Indian comedy scene.
[citation needed] The Comedy Store from London opened an outlet in Mumbai's Palladium Mall where people would regularly enjoy comedians from UK.
All of this happened in association with growth of a counterculture in Indian cities which catered to the appetite of younger generations for live events for comedy, poetry, storytelling, and music.
As a result of these developments, plus the increasing penetration of YouTube (along with Internet/World Wide Web), Indian stand-up comedy started reaching further masses.
While the established comedians such as Vir Das, Papa CJ were independently growing through various corporate / international performances, other comedians such as Vipul Goyal, Biswa Kalyan Rath, Kenny Sebastian, Atul Khatri, Kanan Gill, Kunal Kamra, Anubhav Singh Bassi, Tanmay Bhat, Zakir Khan, Abhishek Upmanyu, Samay Raina grew popular through YouTube videos, where they posted clips of their live comedy shows.
