Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, Los Angeles, 1979. / Typescript. Vita. Includes abstract. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 369-375).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2006. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 281-290). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

Female stand-up comics occupy a permanently liminal space which can be broken down into three small areas, characterized thusly: the interpersonal, the sexual and the professional spheres. Issues of power, footing and the carnivalesque are threaded throughout these three spaces, and I use the work of Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin and Erving Goffman to examine the ways in which the female comics I talked, lived and performed with over a two-year period negotiate this permanent liminality to both their advantage and their detriment. The three liminal spaces overlap and intersect, with female comics occupying at times two, and sometimes all three, at any given moment, in a constantly forming and re-forming state of “otherness” that separates them from the default male comic body. In locating female comedians in a permanent liminality, I illustrate the structures at play that are demonstrative not only of the comic experience, but of larger issues surrounding gender in contemporary society. / text

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1993. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [211]-227).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [220]-225).

xi, 158 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / This study, set in the context of the feminist sex wars, explores the performances of Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Split Britches throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. The purpose of this study is to better understand the implications of a specific style of lesbian comedic performance, found at the WOW Café and defined here as lesbian camp, throughout a contentious era in feminist politics. The motivating questions for this study are: How can a performance inspire an activated spectatorship? How have lesbian comedic performance practices provoked feminist theory and practice? Chapter II defines lesbian camp and attempts to trace a dialogue among lesbian performance critics and academics ruminating over lesbian camp and its existence. It also explores lesbian camp's relationship to drag and butch-femme as well as how lesbian camp functions within specific performances of Holly Hughes, Split Britches, and Carmelita Tropicana. Chapter III argues that it is the very element of lesbian camp that brings forth the potential for an activated spectatorship. It is a chaotic, unstable environment that exposes and disassembles deep-seated fears, ideals, and practices seemingly inherent, although pragmatically constructed, to our communities and cultures throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. It presents a climate of resistance through the disruption of identificatory practices. This, in turn, provokes an activated spectatorship. Chapter IV examines the effects these artists had on the larger stage of the feminist sex wars and culture wars. Holly Hughes, for example, became a national figure, defunded from the National Endowment for the Arts due to her subject of the queer body, then deemed obscene and pornographic. Split Britches were popularized by feminists in the academy not only for their creative techniques but also for their (de)construction of butch-femme coupling. Carmelita Tropicana brought drag to a whole new level with incorporation of male and female drag into her hybrid performances. / Committee in charge: John Schmor, Chairperson, Theater Arts; Sara Freeman, Member, Theater Arts; Theresa May, Member, Theater Arts; Ellen Scott, Outside Member, Sociology

Historically, disabled people have not been viewed as innovators of humor because disability is associated with tragedy. My dissertation challenged the association of disability with tragedy by positioning disabled comedians as educators and ambassadors of disability rights. I reviewed the literature on disability and humor as well as disability oppression, which disability humor challenges. I used phenomenology as well as culturally responsive methodologies to examine what disabled comedians are achieving with their humor and what nondisabled audience members learned from attending their performances. Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory of learning was used to examine learning outcomes for audience members. I examined historical and contemporary Black humor, which is much older than disability humor in order to investigate what may be the future of disability humor.

In this dissertation I seek to analyse the use of autobiographical monologues and elements in selected scenes from the political revues Foreign Aids (2001) and Elections and Erections (2009) by South African playwright-performer Pieter-Dirk Uys. The purpose of this analysis is to evaluate the use of autobiographical writing in revue performance as an alternative method for presenting autobiography to spectators. My argument is that the unique style and format of the revue-form provides a distinct approach to the live performance of autobiography. The analyses centre on the revues Foreign Aids and Elections and Erections in a literary comparison with Uys’ two prose narrative memoirs, Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun (2002) and Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting (2005). These two book-length print memoirs have passages of text that correspond with the autobiographical monologues and other dramatic elements in the revues that I have selected. The aim of providing the comparative analysis of Uys’ revues with his memoirs is to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of these genres insofar as Uys has employed each to attempt to write and perform aspects of his life-story. In order to facilitate these analyses, I have researched international studies on the interdisciplinary field of performance autobiography. I have come to rely on two key theorists of performance autobiography, Sherrill Grace and Deirdre Heddon, and I have applied their theories to my study of Uys’ revues. I discuss several autobiographical scenes in Foreign Aids, comparing them with passages from Elections and Erections: A Memoir of Fear and Fun, and I compare a selected monologue in Elections and Erections, the revue, with a passage containing the same material in Between the Devil and the Deep: A Memoir of Acting and Reacting. The comparison between the revues and the memoirs reveals the narrative and stylistic similarities and differences between Uys’ writing and performance of the self in performance narrative as opposed to prose narrative. The study identifies the most salient features of Uys’ autobiographical performances, including the thematic links between the individual life-story and the concern with social welfare, the sharing of intimate anecdotes regarding his own sex-life and the sexual practices of South Africans, and the relationality between the self and other represented in dialogues where he portrays himself and other characters speaking to each other. / Thesis (M.A)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

Racism persists individually and institutionally in the U.S. and race-based comedy prevails in media, accepted by diverse audiences as jokes. Media priming and Social Identity Theory theoretically ground this two-part experimental study that examines Latino participants' judgments of in-group (Latino) and out-group (White) alleged offenders in judicial cases after being primed with race-based stereotype comedy performed by an in-group (Latino) or out-group (White) comedian. First, participants read race-based stereotype comedy segments and evaluated them on perceptions of the comedian, humor, enjoyment, and stereotypicality. Second, participants read two criminal judicial review cases for alleged offenders and provided guilt evaluations. Importantly, a distinction was made between high and low Latino identifier participants to determine whether racial identity salience might impact responses to in-group and/or out-group members in comedy and judicial contexts. The results reveal that the high Latino identifiers found the race-based comedy segments more stereotypical than did the low Latino identifiers. Latino participants rated the comedy higher on enjoyment when the comedian was perceived to be a Latino in-group member as opposed to a White out-group member. The high Latino identifiers rated the White alleged offender higher on guilt than the Latino alleged offender after being primed with race-based comedy. Simply projecting in-group or out-group racial identity of comedians and alleged offenders with name manipulations in the study influenced how participants responded to the comedy material, and persisted in guiding guilt judgments on alleged offenders in the judicial reviews based on participants' Latino identity salience. A Latino comedian's position as popular joke-teller in the media overrides in-group threat, despite invoking in-group stereotypes in humor. Even with greater enjoyment expressed for Latino comedians' performing stereotypical race-based material, the tendency to react more harshly against perceived out-group members as a defense strategy to maintain positive in-group salience remained in real-world judgments on alleged offenders. Despite the claim that light-hearted comedy is meant to be laughed at and not taken seriously, jokes that disparage racial groups as homogeneous, simplistic, and criminal impact subsequent responses to out-group members in a socially competitive attempt to maintain positive in-group identity, to the detriment of out-groups.

This written explication deals with the integration of the forms of stand-up comedy and domestic comedy in order to create a comic text. The comic text explores issues regarding the presentation and representation of Jewish cultural identity. The integration results in both the experienced and imagined truths of the playwright to become present on stage. These were points of enquiry in the writing, directing and performing of DRIVEN: A COMEDY IN 70 MINUTES, which opened at The Intimate Theatre, Orange Street, Cape Town on the 23 November 2004. The Introduction deals with defining key terms and forms to be used and discussed in the thesis, informing the reader of the writer's purpose in creating comic text by integrating stand-up and domestic comedy. In the first chapter the generating of comic text is explored. The generating of comic text is achieved by using the comic persona. The comic persona is developed using identity, outside voice. Once the comic persona is in place it is possible to: create an authentic stage persona for the stand-up comedian and to create a 'theatrical climate' consisting of plot, characters, themes and narrative storylines. In the second chapter the idea of pastiche (borrowed elements) is explored in terms of its impact structurally and stylistically in the writing, directing and performing of DRIVEN. Structurally this impact is evident via the use of 'pastiching' the structure of situation comedy (sitcom) and stylistically through the use of Yiddish and the influence of other comedians' performance styles on the comic persona. The third chapter delves into the way Jewish cultural identity is represented through stand-up comedy and Jewish cultural identity is presented through domestic comedy. The stand-up comedian, through persona, audience relationship and other devices associated with the form, becomes the representation of Jewish cultural identity. Characters, story and situation, through the use of both comic traits (elements associated with Jewish cultural identity) and stereotypes, become the presentation of Jewish cultural identity.