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theses

Contradiction is inherent in the live stand-up comedy ritual. Between the expected and the unexpected. Between values and actions. Between cooperation and conflict. A competent performer integrates these competing ideas while leading audiences down pathways of collective emotion. This exercise thrives under certain social conditions, ones grounded in the shared reality of everyday life while being simultaneously set apart from it through the use of different cognitive and emotional norms. Performers operating within a genre of convention add a sheen of spontaneity to make prepared material seem like it organically and effortlessly emerges from the context, the audience, and the performer. The product is an act of consensual manipulation supported by audiences invested in the success of the occasion. In the pages that follow, I use observations, interviews, and content analysis of books written for aspiring performers to explore this ritual. I identify features of the social and physical context that allow for the successful implementation of the ritual and how performers and audience members work together within this setting to create success and failure. In the second chapter, I focus on the agentic behavior of the person on stage, exploring strategies they use to construct a sense of personal authenticity in the minds of those watching. Following this, I also explore how the prohibitions of in-person gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic led to attempts to replicate the ritual in digital spaces, primarily focusing on those conducted on programs designed for videoconferencing, typically Zoom, and how these differed from those held in person. Moving from the digital stage to the backstage, I investigate the writing and performance strategies implemented by those new to performing in the ritual and how the types of material and writing processes change as performers acquire expertise through experience. This highlights what can and cannot be learned through the practice itself. I conclude with an examination of how social concerns and contradictions happening in the outside world are converted to material within the stand-up comedy ritual. To do this, I examine some of the various ways that performers I observed spoke about the COVID-19 vaccine and different social responses relating to it.

http://dissertations.umi.com/gsnb.rutgers:12289

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

doi:10.7282/t3-62cs-8t21

The author owns the copyright to this work.