This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
The module will provide a thorough exploration of stand-up comedy techniques at the forefront of professional discipline. Students will create and perform short routines, which they will use in regular performances in the low-key public context of Monkeyshine, a weekly comedy club set up for this purpose. As well as giving them a good deal of stage experience and allowing them to build up a body of tried and tested material, this will also give them the space to experiment and develop an individual voice, showing original approaches to stand-up.
Between one and three 4-hour practical classes per week; one performance per week (which you will perform in or provide technical support for)
Series of short performances (100%)
• Allen, Tony, Attitude: Wanna Make Something Of It?, Glastonbury: Gothic Image, 2002
• Barker, Clive, ‘The “Image” in Show Business’, Theatre Quarterly, Vol. VIII, No. 29, Spring 1978, pp.7-11
• Carr, Jimmy and Greeves, Lucy, The Naked Jape: Uncovering the Hidden World of Jokes, London: Michael Joseph, 2006
• Critchley, S., On Humour, London: Routledge, 2002
• Double, Oliver, Stand-Up: On Being a Comedian, London: Methuen, 1997
• Double, Oliver, Getting the Joke: the Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy (second edition), London: Bloomsbury, 2014
• Johnstone, Keith, Impro, London: Eyre Methuen, 1981
• Koestler, Arthur, The Act of Creation, London: Hutchinson, 1964 (Part One: The Jester)
• Lee, Stewart, How I Escaped my Certain Fate: The Life and Deaths of a Stand-Up Comedian, London: Faber & Faber, 2010
• Martin, Steve, Born Standing Up, London: Simon & Schuster, 2007
• Mintz, L.E., ‘Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation’, American Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, Spring 1985, pp.71-80
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
After completing the module, students should be able to:
- Deploy advanced skills in performing stand-up comedy
- Deploy advanced skills in writing and/or devising stand-up comedy material
- Demonstrate the development of an individual voice in their work, showing original approaches to stand-up comedy material and performance.
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