Tossing truths
Improvisation and the performative utterances of Nichols and May
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20262871 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kyle Stevens, Κ Ν Stevens (0000-0003-4338-5599, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 52 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 23-46 |
| Publication date | 2010-10-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Critical Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0011-1562 • E-ISSN: 1467-8705 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-8705.2010.01947.x |
| OpenAlex | W1733805664 |
| Language | EN |
This paper theorises the style of improvisational comedy innovated by Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nichols and May's commentary relies on the listener's willingness to grasp – and to mock – conventions of ordinary language, and I recount the duo's history while examining their affinity to the contemporaneous work of J. L. Austin. Doing so allows me to demonstrate that Nichols and May complicate Austin's class of ‘performatives’ by recuperating the importance of truth, and that their work occupies a middle ground between referential and fictional language
Aesthetics · Art · Comedy · GRASP · Improvisation · Linguistics · Literature · Performative utterance · Programming language · Style (visual arts) · Visual arts · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Philosophy · Theater, Performance, and Music History · Theatre and Performance Studies
| Highly cited | No |
|---|