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More Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy. C. 1. 84. 7Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? Christy's Minstrels. Mr. Tambo: Say, boss, why did the chicken cross the road? Interlocutor: Why, I don’t know, Mr.

Find all Off-Broadway shows at TheaterMania.com. Buy Off-Broadway show tickets and get info on every show. Read Off-Broadway news and Off-Broadway show reviews and more. Directed by Joel Gallen. With Flavor Flav, Katt Williams, Jeffrey Ross, Greg Giraldo. It's Flavor Flav's turn to step in to the celebrity hot seat for the latest. 100 More Jokes That Shaped Modern Comedy. A second look at bits, sketches, one-liners, and even modern art that have influenced American humor for the past 170 years. Time to hassle the Hoff at the rudest, raunchiest television event of the year--The Comedy Central Roast of David Hasselhoff. From running in slo-mo on the beach to.

Tambo, why did the chicken cross the road? Mr. Bones: To get to the other side! Minstrel is considered the original sin of American show business. The history of the country cannot be separated from the fact that it was built on the backs of black slaves, and the history of modern comedy cannot ignore that it started with white men in blackface. This includes the first joke most Americans learn as children, which has its roots in 1. Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side” was one of a handful of riddle- gags frequently used by Christy’s Minstrels, a group of blackface entertainers, formed by Edwin Pearce Christy, who would go on to become the most famous minstrel troupe ever.

An 1. 84. 7 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine is credited as the first to print the joke; however, it is unclear where the joke started. Likely it began as a folk joke that the Christy’s adapted.) The group is credited with inventing or at least popularizing “the line,” the name for the three- man act that would be the focus of the first of a three- act minstrel show, with the “interlocutor” in the middle, between “Mr. Tambo” and “Mr. Bones.” Rhetorical question- and- answer bits like “Why did the chicken cross the road?” were performed as a rapid- fire dialogue between the three. It was a precursor to the vaudeville two- man act, and thus a precursor to essentially all future comedy. The influence of the joke, and white minstrel shows in general, on the form is complete and total, but it shouldn’t be ignored that the goal was affirming white supremacy. The fight for fair representation of black people in comedy continues to this day, over a century and a half later; however, white minstrel shows would soon fall out of fashion in favor of black minstrel shows, burlesque, and, eventually, vaudeville.

Billiard Ball Trick. Billy Kersands[While stuffing two billiard balls in his mouth] “If God had made my mouth any bigger, he would have had to move my ears.”After the Civil War, minstrel shows starring white actors in blackface fell out of favor and in their place arose a number of bllack minstrels. None was more popular than Billy Kersands. Famed vaudeville comedian Tom Fletcher wrote, “In the South, a minstrel show without Billy Kersands is like a circus without elephants.” Though he eventually wrote the lyrics of the song that led to Aunt Jemima becoming a pancake icon, Kersands’s greatest gifts were physical. The slightest curl of his lip or opening of that yawning chasm termed his mouth was of itself sufficient to convulse the audience,” said an observer. One could only image the response to his billiard- ball trick.

Still, that joke underlines his complicated legacy. Kersands’s act affirmed many of the worst stereotypes of the slow- witted Sambo character seen in white minstrel shows. As a result, many blacks, particularly in the north, opposed his act. That said, Kersands had more black fans than white, and his popularity resulted in theater owners relaxing their segregation policies. Also, although his performance – especially from a modern perspective – might be seen as horribly offensive, it was more nuanced and human — even if only slightly — than those of white minstrels and incorporated some black folk traditions.

As black- comedy historian Mel Watkins writes in his book On the Real Side, Kersands was likely the first black comedian to face what would become a recurring dilemma from Stepin Fetchit to In Living Color: “the conflict between satirizing social images of blacks and contributing to whites’ negative stereotypes of blacks in general.”1. Way Down in Front. Lydia Thompson“And way down in front by the footlights’ glow /The bald- headed men sat in the front row.

They had big glasses to see all the sights /Including the blondes who danced in silk tights.”Modern- day burlesque may be synonymous with stripteases and tassels, but when Lydia Thompson and her “British Blondes” first hit America in 1. Ixion, their style of Victorian Burlesque was as much about bawdiness of mind as of body.

Their parody musicals mocked the traditions of theater and opera, often featuring female characters in traditionally male leads and spoofing popular songs of the day. Within a year of Thompson’s arrival, the New York Times was declaring a “mania for burlesque,” despite the paper’s evident snobbery about this newly popular theatrical style. In the first wave of American burlesque, the productions were female- led and the costumes were revealing — above- the- knee dresses and tights — making them a risqué treat for the audiences who flocked to the shows. Since most of the music used was stolen outright from other works, they kept few records of their performances, but their influence was enormous, spawning troupes around the country and a style that remained popular for decades, offering a high- brow alternative to minstrel shows and setting up the rise of vaudeville. It also goes to show that women have been telling dirty jokes as long as women have been allowed to tell jokes, a legacy that continues to this day. I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major- General’Gilbert & Sullivan, ‘The Pirates of Penzance’Major General Stanley: I am the very model of a modern Major- General /I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral /I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical /From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical /I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical /I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical /About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news [bothered for a rhyme] /With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse.

Gilbert and Sullivan had written a hit in London, H. M. S. Pinafore, and set sail for New York to stage it there. Only, nobody was interested in going to see it since copyright law didn’t extend to foreigners at the time, and a number of theater companies had already staged the show in America. The solution? Stage a new production in America, copyright it there, and beat the pirates at their own game.

The classic comic opera The Pirates of Penzance would go on to feature the best example of their influential modernizing of the patter song — “The Major- General Song.” Made up of many types of humor — wordplay, references both historic and cultural, social satire (a “modern” military man must be educated rather than brawny), and even meta humor (“that infernal nonsense Pinafore!”) — the funniest and most lasting part remains just how absurdly fast it is, setting a comedic pace soon seen in vaudeville. The song brought the house down in 1. You may not know any of the hundreds of words, but I’ll bet you know the tune, and there aren’t a lot of Victorian- era operatic songs that can claim that. Fools in Town. Mark Twain, ‘The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’the king: Cuss the doctor! What do we k’yer for HIM?

Hain’t we got all the fools in town on our side? Watch The Jerk Megavideo more. And ain’t that a big enough majority in any town? Mark Twain’s most famous work is best known for its biting commentary on racism and the Victorian panic over corrupted youth, but just as important is Twain’s satire of man as a whole. The young boy Huck and runaway slave Jim encounter two con artists, referred to as the king and the duke, who don’t just exploit their fellow man, they play them like fiddles. The two criminals disagree on whether they should quit while they’re ahead, since the doctor in the town that they are swindling has figured them out. The king says the above, not only winning the argument, but taking down every town in America in one fell swoop.

There were plenty of people speaking truth to power and writing things that made people think back then, but when’s the last time you heard about somebody reading John Esten Cooke for fun?