Chicago Comedy

Famous for being a city of broad shoulders, Chicago has also developed an international reputation for split sides and slapped knees. Watch the Chicago style of comedy evolve from nineteenth-century v

Ten years after Chicago saw its first full-time comedy club open, the landscape was decidedly different. "Stand-up comedy has exploded in the last couple of years," a club owner told the Chicago Tribu

In this hilarious, heartfelt memoir, the star of Mr. Show, Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul opens up about the highs and lows of showbiz, his cult status as a comedy writer, and what it’s like to reinvent himself as an action film ass-kicker at fifty. Bob Odenkirk’s career is inexplicable. And yet he will try like hell to explicate it for you. Charting a “Homeric” decades-long “Odyssey” from his origins in the seedy comedy clubs of Chicago to a dramatic career full of award nominations and including a side-trip that is baffling to all who know him, into the action-man world, it’s almost like there are many Bob Odenkirks! But there is just one and one is plenty. Bob embraced a life in comedy after a chance meeting with Second City’s legendary Del Close. He somehow made his way to a job as a writer at SNL. While surviving that legendary gauntlet by the skin of his gnashing teeth, he stashed away the secrets of comedy writing—eventually employing them in the immortal “Motivati

Chicago Love Tapestry is a one act romantic comedy with strong thematic elements about the "tangled web" love weaves: new relationships seem to develop inevitably in the wake of relationships gone awr

"A hilarious, raucous, painfully graphic portrait of The Marriage from Hell."--Chicago Tribune

Beneath the unassuming surface of a progressive women’s college lurks a world of intellectual pride and pomposity awaiting devastation by the pens of two brilliant and appalling wits. Randall J

In The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, Seth Benardete focuses on the idea of the good in what is widely regarded as one of Plato's most challenging and complex dialogues, the Philebus. Traditionally the P

In this highly entertaining book, Lawrence Weschler chronicles the antics of J. S. G. Boggs, an artist whose consuming passion is money, or perhaps more precisely, value. Boggs draws money-paper notes

With The Tragedy and Comedy of Life, Seth Benardete completes his examination of Plato's understanding of the beautiful, the just, and the good. Benardete first treated the beautiful in The Being of t

In this exuberantly satirical novel, the tutor Atzbacher has beensummoned by his friend Reger to meet him in a Viennese museum. WhileReger gazes at a Tintoretto portrait, Atzbacher—who fears Reger'spl

Although books on the comedies of the silent era abound, few have attempted to survey film comedy as a whole—its history and evolution, how the philosophical visions of its greatest artists and direct

In 1975, the Broadway musical Chicago brought together a host of memes and myths - the gleefully subversive character of American musical comedy, the reckless glamour of the big-city newspaper, the ma

The Greek playwright Aristophanes (active 427–386 BCE) is often portrayed as the poet who brought stability, discipline, and sophistication to the rowdy theatrical genre of Old Comedy. In this groundb

A popular crowd pleaser from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, the dramatic jig was a short, comic, bawdy musical-drama that included elements of dance, slapstick, and disguise. For t

How do various forms of comedy—including stand-up, satire, and film and television—transform contemporary invocations of nationalism and citizenship in youth cultures? And how are attitudes about gend

Since its modest beginning in 1959, The Second City in Chicago has become a world-renowned bastion of hilarity. A training ground for many of today’s top comedic talents—including Alan Arkin, Dan Aykr

Charlie Chaplin.?Buster Keaton.?The Marx Brothers.?Billy Wilder.?Woody Allen.?The Coen brothers.?Where would the American film be without them??Yet the cinematic genre these artists represent--comedy-

Longtime Chicagoan Nadia Oehlsen reveals her secrets for living the good life cheaply in the Windy City, including how to enjoy free concerts, movies,comedy acts,and magic shows, where to

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has, despite its enormous popularity and importance, often stymied readers with its multitudinous characters, references, and themes. But until the publication in 2007

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy has, despite its enormous popularity and importance, often stymied readers with its multitudinous characters, references, and themes. But until the publication in 2007

As the heady promise of the sixties sagged under the weight of widespread violence, rioting, and racial unrest, two young men - one black and one white - took to stages across the nation to help Amer

The ultimatebiography of National Lampoon and its cofounder Doug Kenney, this book offers the first complete history of the immensely popular magazine and its brilliant and eccentric characters

Janet Coleman brilliantly recreates the time, the place, the personalities, and the neurotic magic whereby the Compass made theater history in America. The Compass began in a storefront theater near t

A literary star ascending makes her UK debut with a novel about the funniest people's saddest stories'Utterly charming ... Bordas is an invaluable new voice' George Saunders'A disquisition into the nature of comedy and creativity. Like the best comedians ... Bordas is alert to the deeper joke' Sunday Times'Amusing... impressive' New York Times 'Marvellously engaging and entertaining ... full of terrific moments and cutting dialogue' IndependentEvery comedian knows that there's a line between sharp and cruel, that sad becomes funny at the right angle, that any moment in life, however painful or triumphant, has the potential to become a punchline. At the Chicago Stand-up School, success is about the material. But maybe Artie is too handsome to be taken seriously on stage, Olivia too scared to examine her past, and Phil too afraid to cause harm. Their teachers are obsessed with failure: Kruger trying to command his father's respect, Ashbee weary of the way his Blackness attracts a type of

An irresistible comedy of manners about three generations of a Chicago restaurant family and the deep-fried, beer-battered, cream cheese-frosted love that feeds them all.Here are the three things the Sullivan family knows to be true: the Chicago Cubs will always be the underdogs; historical progress is inevitable; and their grandfather, Bud, founder of JP Sullivan’s, will always make the best burgers in Oak Park. But when, over the course of three strange months, the Cubs win the World Series, Trump is elected president, and Bud drops dead, suddenly everyone in the family finds themselves doubting all they hold dear. Take Gretchen for example, lead singer for a ’90s cover band who has been flirting with fame for a decade but is beginning to wonder if she’s too old to be chasing a childish dream. Or Jane, Gretchen’s older sister, who is starting to suspect that her fitness-obsessed husband who hides the screen of his phone isn’t always “working late.” And then there’s Teddy, their stead

A couple’s powerful story of how God comforts us so that we can comfort others. Anthony Griffith, a stand-up comic from Chicago’s South Side, has lived on the borderline of comedy and trag

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy th

Stephen Rosenfield, founder and director of the American Comedy Institute, the premier comedy school in the United States, has taught literally dozens of major standup comics in North America, and has

Consider Miles Davis, horn held high, sculpting a powerful musical statement full of tonal patterns, inside jokes, and thrilling climactic phrases—all on the fly. Or think of a comedy troupe riffing o

From the Orange Prize–winning author of A Crime in the Neighborhood, Suzanne Berne’sThe Dogs of Littlefield is “sublime” (The Chicago Tribune), a suspenseful and hilarious“suburban comedy of manners p

In Dante and the Limits of the Law, Justin Steinberg offers the first comprehensive study of the legal structure crucial to Dante’sDivine Comedy. Steinberg reveals how Dante imagines an afterlife domi

The Tunnel of Love is a goofy situation comedy involving suburban neighbors who know too much about each other’s private lives. The narrator is an upstanding commuting family man who, faced with awkwa

When Bad Things Happen to Rich People is a novel of social satire, a black comedy set in Chicago in the summer of 1995. The novel’s protagonist, Nix Walters, is an adjunct instructor of English at a c

In Dante and the Limits of the Law, Justin Steinberg offers the first comprehensive study of the legal structure crucial to Dante’s Divine Comedy. Steinberg reveals how Dante imagines an afterlife dom

Bollywood movies have been long known for their colorful song-and-dance numbers and knack for combining drama, comedy, action-adventure, and music. But when India entered the global marketplace in the

Bollywood movies have been long known for their colorful song-and-dance numbers and knack for combining drama, comedy, action-adventure, and music. But when India entered the global marketplace in the

“It is a meditation on Chicago’s old soul . . . a witty, seductive, live-wire and greatly entertaining dark comedy that you just don’t want to end.” –Chicago Tribune“The sting, the speed and marksmans

Slapstick comedy is the primary mode of performance for clowns, and in Serious Play, drama scholar Louise Peacock explores the evolution ?over the past fifty years of this unique brand of physical com