Commedia dell Arte was Improvised Comedy Developed in Italy

Richard Pryor, arguably one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time, credits his comedic abilities to many comedians, one being Charlie Chaplin. You may be thinking, “how does Charlie Chaplin, the guy who played The Tramp in silent black and white movies, influence a stand up comedian like Richard Pryor?” Well, you may be surprised to know that all American stand-up comedians are heavily impacted by the performances in the late nineteenth century. During the late 1800’s, vaudeville and burlesque dominated performance venues across the country and developed a new art form that had never been seen before. Although stand-up is one of the only true American art forms, we cannot forget to credit vaudeville and burlesque performers who paved the way for the rise of stand-up comedy. Believe it or not, nineteenth century burlesque and vaudeville play a major role in the evolution of what stand-up comedy is today. After all, how can we respect the art form of stand-up comedy today without fully understanding how it all began?

Vaudeville was a theatrical paradigm in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance consisted of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts included popular and classical musicians, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, female

In Roman comedy, the use of stock characters helped to represent common archetypes in society. Stock characters were also used to allow for audiences to easily understand a production, as the characters were so commonly seen. In modern movies and specifically American comedy, stereotypical characters are often used that demonstrate society’s beliefs about certain types of people. These characters are often used satirically to mock the stereotypes that lead people to judge others. Regardless of when stock characters are utilized, they point to the ideas that a society has about certain types of people during a specific time period.

At the end of World War I, an excited America was poised for a cultural renaissance; patriotism was on the rise, the strong concept of Manifest Destiny had passed its peak of influence, and, most importantly, there had not been a clear shift in culture for decades. The Jazz Age of the 1920s was about to dawn, bringing with it youthful, risqué morals and a carefree look on life. From these ideals, a new, strongly American form of entertainment would emerge: musical theatre. Most commonly found in New York City on Broadway even to this day, musical theatre became an escape from reality and an entry into the imagination. The grand and splashy components that make up what is considered a classic Broadway musical can ultimately be traced back to Cole Porter. Porter’s writing, albeit at times controversial or raunchy, was able to harness the frantically beating heart of the Jazz Age and turn it into treasured shows. Using his unique melodies, romantic or idealistic lyrics, and his pioneering of writing about the human experience, Cole Porter shaped American music and theatre from the 1920s through the 1940s.

Language developed tremendously through the use of silent films in the 1800s and early 1900s. A silent film is that which consists of only the picture, and no sound. This was an era of truly transformative filmmaking, forcing writers and producers to have to step out of a comfort zone in order to allow purely visual expressions to touch their audiences and convey their stories. This was achieved through a greater emphasis on facial expressions and body language.

The 19th century was a mark of new things to come about in different countries, these new things were music, theater, and other forms of entertainment. Because of the many wars fought during this time there was much depression and people needed a relief. We all know theater has been around for many decades, but it really started to scatter during this time, people needed entertainment and something to look forward to. Of course, music halls and minstrel shows were present but there was nothing that contained both of the features that these theaters had, and then came about vaudeville. Vaudeville highlighted many famous people’s careers and even helped started many of these stars’ careers. It grew as years progressed and became a loved entertainment for many years to come. Vaudevilles’ creation was the start of our current forms of entertainment and is the heart of the American entertainment industry in the 19th century.

There are a lot of many characters in this book. So i just going to name a few. They are Jamal, Carlos Lopez, Darnell Williams, Eli, Rico, Rondal Fort. Jamal,

Such characters as these were created because the audience could relate to them and laugh. As the people changed, so too did stock characters. More were added into the list of masks, and elements such as costume changed to suit the society the play was directed at.

1.) Characters in the novel are John Grady, Lacey Rawlins, Belvins, Alejandra, Senor Rocha, Cole, Franklin, Captain and Perez. The most important characters throughout the novel are John Grady, Belvins, Rawlins, and Alejandra as they are the major characters.

By the beginning of the 1970s, film had become the medium through which performing artists were commenting on currant events. Films

the TV characters. These examples display the great difference in the depth of the characters

In the nineteenth century, many movements arose in the field of theatre both in the United States and in Europe. Some of the movements that took place in the west together with the melodrama includes the plays o naturalism, Romanticism, well-made plays of scribes and Sardou, Wilde’s drawing-room comedies, symbolism and the farces of Feydeau as depicted in the late works of Henrik Ibsen. Melodrama is a collective name to refer to open group of films that the majority of reviewers refers to as romance, thrillers, and drama. The melodrama as a source of entertainment is believed to have spread rapidly in the nineteenth century due to the growth of industrial revolution and urban development (McHugh 41). It is important to note that this genre is multi-disciplinary in its nature as it accepts elements from another category of films, hence the open name category. Therefore, melodrama is one of the widely most appreciated and has attracted the interest of many reviewers since the nineteenth century, hence the rapid rise.

     Theater originated from the religious rites of ancient Greek tribes. Located in northern Greece, a cult was formed to worship the God of wine and fertility, Dionysus. The cult held religious celebrations which included large consumptions of alcohol, animal sacrifices, and sometimes

The history of theatre in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries is one of the increasing commercialization of the art, accompanied by technological innovations, the introduction of serious critical review, expansion of the subject matters portrayed to include ordinary people, and an emphasis on more natural forms of acting. Theatre, which had been dominated by the church for centuries, and then by the tastes of monarchs for more than 200 years, became accessible to merchants, industrialists, and the less privileged and then the masses.

    According to Aristotle (who speculates on the matter in his Poetics), ancient comedy originated with the komos, a curious and improbable spectacle in which a company of festive males apparently sang, danced, and cavorted rollickingly around the image of a large phallus.  (If this theory is true, by the way, it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "stand-up routine.")