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Oliver Double
Oliver Double (born 22 April 1965) is a British stand-up comedian, author and academic. Since 1999, he has taught comic and popular performance at the University of Kent. His current roles at the university are Reader in Drama and Theatre, and Head of Comedy and Popular Performance. Career Double worked as a circuit comedian and founded the Last Laugh comedy club in Sheffield. He continues to perform in his one-person shows ''Saint Pancreas'' and ''Break a Leg'' and in a monthly comedy club called Funny Rabbit. He has written books on the subject including 1997's ''Stand Up!'' and 2012's ''Britain Had Talent'' as well as book chapters and articles about stand-up comedy, alternative comedy, variety theatre and vaudeville Double contributed to the creation of the British Stand-Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) at Kent University's Templeman Library and he produced a monthly podcast about BSUCA called ''A History of Comedy in Several Objects.'' He has appeared on TV programmes and docume ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
University Of Kent
, motto_lang = , mottoeng = Literal translation: 'Whom to serve is to reign'(Book of Common Prayer translation: 'whose service is perfect freedom')Graham Martin, ''From Vision to Reality: the Making of the University of Kent at Canterbury'' (University of Kent at Canterbury, 1990) page 36 As Martin notes "Our former Information Officer has ventured the opinion that Cranmer would not have got very high marks had this phrase appeared in an O-Level Latin paper!" , top_free_label = , top_free = , type = Public , established = , closed = , founder = , parent = , affiliation = , affiliations = Universities UKSGroup European Universities' Network EUA ACU Eastern ARCUniversities at Medway , religious_affiliation = , academic_affiliation = , endowment = £5.528 million (2018) , budget = , officer_in_charge = , chairman = , chairperson = , chancellor = Gavin Esler , president = , vice-president = , superintendent = , vice_chancellor = Karen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stand-up Comedian
Stand-up comedy is a comedic performance to a live audience in which the performer addresses the audience directly from the stage. The performer is known as a comedian, a comic or a stand-up. Stand-up comedy consists of one-liners, stories, observations or a shtick that may incorporate props, music, magic tricks or ventriloquism. It can be performed almost anywhere, including comedy clubs, comedy festivals, bars, nightclubs, colleges or theatres. History Stand-up as a Western art form has its roots in the stump speech of American minstrel shows, which featured an actor in blackface delivering nonsensical monologue to the audience. While the intention of stump speeches was to mock African-Americans, they also occasionally contained political and social satire. The minstrel show would later influence theatrical traditions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, such as vaudeville and burlesque. The first documented use of "stand-up" as a term was in ''The Stage'' in 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Solo Performance
A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show or one-woman show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including autobiographical creations, comedy acts, novel adaptations, vaudeville, poetry, music and dance. In 1996, Rob Becker's '' Defending the Caveman'' became the longest running solo (one man) play in the history of Broadway. Traits of solo performance Solo performance is used to encompass the broad term of a single person performing for an audience. Some key traits of solo performance can include the lack of the fourth wall and audience participation or involvement. Solo performance does not need to be written, performed and produced by a single person—a solo performance production may use directors, writers, designers and composers to bring the piece to life on a stage. An example of this collaboration is Eric Bogosian in the published version ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternative Comedy
Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe content that was an "alternative" to the mainstream of live comedy, which often involved racist and sexist material. In other contexts, it is the nature of the form that is "alternative", avoiding reliance on a standardised structure of a sequence of jokes with punch lines. Patton Oswalt has defined it as "comedy where the audience has no pre-set expectations about the crowd, and vice versa. In comedy clubs, there tends to be a certain vibe—alternative comedy explores different types of material." In an interview with '' The A.V. Club'' after his performance in the 2011 comedy-drama film '' Young Adult'', Oswalt stated: I had come up out of that whole alternative scene, which was all about, "Don’t try it, man. Just go up and wing i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variety Show
Variety show, also known as variety arts or variety entertainment, is entertainment made up of a variety of acts including musical performances, sketch comedy, magic, acrobatics, juggling, and ventriloquism. It is normally introduced by a compère (master of ceremonies) or host. The variety format made its way from the Victorian era stage in Britain and America to radio and then television. Variety shows were a staple of English language television from the late 1940s into the 1980s. While still widespread in some parts of the world, such as in the United Kingdom with the '' Royal Variety Performance'', and South Korea with '' Running Man'', the proliferation of multichannel television and evolving viewer tastes have affected the popularity of variety shows in the United States. Despite this, their influence has still had a major effect on late night television whose late-night talk shows and NBC's variety series '' Saturday Night Live'' (which originally premiered in 197 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imagine (TV Series)
''Imagine'' (typeset as ''imagine...'') is a wide-ranging arts series first broadcast on BBC One in 2003, hosted and executive produced by Alan Yentob. Most series consist of 4 to 7 episodes, each on a different topic. Episodes have been directed by, among others, Geoff Wonfor, Lucy Blakstead, Jill Nicholls, Roger Parsons and Zoë Silver. List of episodes Series 1 (from 11 June 2003): * "The Saatchi Phenomenon" – about businessman Charles Saatchi * "Barbara Hepworth: Shapes Out of Feelings" * "The Hip Hop Generation" * "Stella McCartney: Stella's Story" * " Carlos Acosta: The Reluctant Ballet Dancer" * " The Portrait of Omai" * "John Mortimer: Owning Up at 80" Series 2 (from 12 November 2003): * "The Voice of Bryn Terfel" * "A Funny Business" – A look at British and American sitcoms * "John Soane – Entertaining Mr Soane" * "Martin Parr – The World According to Parr" * "From Pencils to Pixels" – Celebrating the phenomenon of the animated feature film * "An A-Z of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Horizon (British TV Series)
''Horizon'' is an ongoing and long-running British documentary television series on BBC Two that covers science and philosophy. History The programme was first broadcast on 2 May 1964 with "The World of Buckminster Fuller" which explored the theories and structures of inventor Richard Buckminster Fuller and included the ''Horizon'' mission statement: "The aim of ''Horizon'' is to provide a platform from which some of the world's greatest scientists and philosophers can communicate their curiosity, observations and reflections, and infuse into our common knowledge their changing views of the universe". ''Horizon'' continues to be broadcast on BBC Two, and in 2009 added a series of films based on the rich ''Horizon'' archive called ''Horizon Guides'' on BBC Four. In December 2016, it was announced that ''Horizon'' will no longer be made exclusively by the BBC's in-house production division, BBC Studios, and the BBC invited independent production companies to pitch to make episod ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexei Sayle
Alexei David Sayle (born 7 August 1952) is an English actor, author, stand-up comedian, television presenter and former recording artist. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement in the 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic of all time on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007. In an updated 2010 poll he came 72nd. Much of Sayle's humour is in the tradition of Spike Milligan and Monty Python, with riffs based on often absurd and surreal premises. His act is known for its cynicism and political awareness, as well as physical comedy. Early life Sayle was born and brought up in the Anfield suburb of Liverpool, the son of Molly (Malka) Sayle (née Mendelson), a pools clerk, and Joseph Henry Sayle, a railway guard, both of whom were members of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Sayle's mother was of Lithuanian Jewish descent, and some members of his family were devout Jews. From 1964 to 1969, he attended Alsop High School in Walt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote '' The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic '' Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time col ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robin Ince
Robin Ince (born 20 February 1969) is an English comedian, actor and writer, known for presenting the BBC radio show '' The Infinite Monkey Cage'' with physicist Brian Cox, and his stand-up comedy career. Education After attending York House prep school, near Croxley Green in Hertfordshire, Ince was, from age 13, educated at Cheltenham College, a boarding independent school for boys in the spa town Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, followed by Royal Holloway, University of London, from which he graduated in English and Drama in 1991. Career Stand-up comedy In 1990, Ince first appeared at Greyfriars Kirkhouse at the Edinburgh Festival where Eddie Izzard was running a venue. At the time Ince was performing in a play called 'Shadow Walker' by Trevor Maynard. He had appeared at the Cafe Royal as part of the Edinburgh Fringe show 'Rubbernecker' alongside Stephen Merchant, Jimmy Carr and Ricky Gervais in 2001. As a friend of Ricky Gervais, Ince opened as a support act for his ''P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josie Long
Josie Isabel Long (born 17 April 1982) is a British comedian. She started performing as a stand-up at the age of 14 and won the BBC New Comedy Awards at 17. In 2006, Long won the If.comeddies Best Newcomer award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for her show ''Kindness and Exuberance''. She has been nominated for the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show three times. In 2012, Long and director Doug King produced two short comedy films in Glasgow called ''Let's Go Swimming'' and ''Romance and Adventure'', which were nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award. Early life and education Long was born in Sidcup and spent her early life in Orpington, London, where she attended Newstead Wood School for Girls. She began performing stand-up comedy at 14, winning the BBC New Comedy Awards at the age of 17. Long attended Michael Knighton's comedy course in Beckenham, London. At 18 she gave up stand-up whilst attending Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford, ran experimental comedy c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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