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Hi everyone, and welcome back to America Under the Microscope.欢迎回来【闲话美国】. Hello James.

Hi Lulu. Hi everyone.

So what are we gonna talk about today？

Well, I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about comedy. Specifically，stand-up comedy.

单口喜剧,单口相声。

At least from my observations, I haven't really seen any stand-up comedy here in China. I haven't seen any kind of comedy clubs or anything like that.

Oh, James, I think you've been staying at home for too long.

I am a little bit sad, I know.

Because they are everywhere. I would say in the past probably five six years, they have been sprouting up everywhere in all major cities in China.

Really?

Comedy clubs, especially stand-up comedy这种单口相声式的单口喜剧 is getting really popular, and I'm sure some of our audience have watched them on TV or even been to some of these comedy clubs.

This is all news to me. I guess I must be living a hermit life.

But it's perhaps also because they use Chinese and then comedy is very cultural，right？

That is true. That's why you don't really see much comedy going across country lines because they poke fun and talk about things that they're familiar with which you might not be.

Even if you can understand the language, it doesn't necessarily mean you actually get the joke.

So true. It's very true.

Let's get back to the topic of stand-up comedy. It is very popular in United States, right?

Yes, extremely popular. In fact, there's a whole TV channel called Comedy Central that started off as a platform for comedians to host specials, and stand-up comedy has been a popular art form in America for decades and decades.

I actually have Comedy Central. Yeah, I absolutely love it. So first of all，to some of our audience they probably don't know what is stand-up comedy, let's give the definition first.

Okay. So, a stand-up comedy show is you have a performer who's gonna be in stage live in front of an audience. And they're going to be, I would think of them as a kind of storyteller, but obviously humorous tone to the stories they tell, so they write jokes that they will perform， and try to get laughs at the audience.

They're always just one person，right？Because in China we have cross talk，we have Xiang Sheng which is two people.

Right. So most of the time it is just one person. There are a few cases of a comedy duo, or a certain type of comedy which we call improv comedy where you're with a group of people performing funny skits, sketches using props or…

Yeah, let's dial back a little bit because there are many new words here.

Right.

Let's start with what you were saying as improv or improvised. Right, short for improvised就是即兴表演的。Does that mean they don't have any scripts?

That is correct. So they don't prewrite the jokes. They make the jokes up on the spot.

That's challenging.

Very challenging. Usually using audience input.

Oh, I see. That's how they engage audience. Honestly, I think you have improv clubs in Beijing as well. So you can get trained in doing improv.

I have been to an improv show in Beijing.

Are you any good？

I was an audience member, so I was excellent at being an audience member.

All right.

But most stand-up comedy is what we would call observational comedy.

Observational meaning you observe things in life.

Right. So they make jokes based on things they notice about daily life. This could be about relationships.

Being a parent.

Even things like driving or like silly rules they see it at supermarket that make no sense.

Because this is how audience can actually relate to the joke, and that's how they find it funny.

So true.

It's like I know you're a parent, and then you go through all of these ups and downs a parent would. If you see someone doing observational comedy about the problems in parenting，you probably be nodding your head, it's like yes.

That's true. I understand that.

But apart from observational comedy, there's also a lot of pretty out there, sometimes even offensive like making fun of certain people even the audience.

Yes, there's a term for that. We call that insult comedy.

It's actually called insult comedy.

Where they make jokes that are making fun of poking fun of people obviously not to be harmful or offensive but they are…

making fun. Is it a bit like roasting?

It's exactly like roasting. That's what roasting is.

吐槽。Is roasting very popular in American culture?

Not as a stand-up show，but as a television comedy program. Yes. Because the “roastee”, the person that they're poking fun of, is going to be there, and then they'll have all these other people come up on stage and say insulting jokes about them. So we do have it on TV but a live performance, not so common.

Okay, so where to actually see these comic shows comedians?

Well, in America, the most commonplace would be comedy clubs, which most medium size big cities have comedy clubs.

And for live shows, right?

For live shows. Sadly, where I'm from, small town, we didn't have any; but you also get more famous comedians who have their own one person show and they travel from place to place.

They will do a tour.

They'll do a tour.

Like musicians.

Like when I was at university, every year we had a famous comedian do a show at the university and I went to it. It was a lot of fun.

But it's difficult to get the tickets if they are, what we call, sell-out comedy style.

So if it's like the really big name comedians like everyone knows them, household names, they'll sell out Giants Stadium in minutes. Like the tickets are very hard to get.

The rock star in comedy world.

Basically yes.

I cannot imagine being a stand-up act and then telling those jokes to thousands or tens of thousands of people. It's scary even to imagining. Exactly. And when they're on a tour，do they do the same show？

Yeah，so if it's the same tour，they'll usually do the same set from show to show with maybe slight variation. That's why comedians always need to constantly write and have new material, or else people aren't going to go back to see their shows if they're going to see the same jokes again and again.

This is what I think. I think comedians are amazing because if you're an actor，whether you are good or bad, people go to see you, you don't have to make them laugh or cry. They can just say it's okay，it's a good show. But comedy, it only has one standard. Can you make people laugh？If you cannot, you failed.

And that leads us to some fun terms you can use to talk about comedians.

Actually, I do have a lot of questions and I think our audience have a lot of questions as well. We have a lot of those terms in Chinese and I'm wondering how to link them with the English term.

Okay.

First of all，we have this idea of what makes a joke funny is usually this one sentence like 梗or相声里面叫做包袱。

We call that a punchline in English.

A punchline. That is very common like comics, they do use punchlines a lot.

So they tell their comedic story and building up tension, till you're getting to this point, and then they hit you with that one line that ties everything together in a very funny way. We call that a punchline.

It is very difficult to be a successful comedian because not only do you need to have all these punchlines, the jokes, the stories, you also need perfect timing.

Timing is extremely important, otherwise if you have a punchline but poor timing，you're going to bomb.

Bomb meaning...?

Fail.

Okay. Bomb like b-o-m-b.

Just like the thing we drop on from airplanes.

I see. If you say a comedian bombed, that means a bad show. He did not make anyone laugh. It was embarrassing. But when that happens, you know actually going to a comedy club to a live show，some people from the audience, they will just literally say go home! you suck!

Hecklers.

Oh, there's a name for these people.

They're called hecklers. The verb is to heckle.

To heckle就是喝倒彩，哄场。

Yeah, so good comedians know how to handle those people. So they usually will insult them in a comedic way to point out how they're bad. In some cases, the comedy show will remove that audience member.

If it goes too far they will remove them.

But then you also see people just say boo like嘘人下场的这种。

Simply boo off stage you are just booing them to make them go away you won't let them speak. It is boo，boo…

It sounds like the Chinese boo is like no.

I know, it sounds，actually, it would kind of fit as you are saying no.

No, go home don't embarrass yourself anymore on the stage. And you know that when two things sound the same，and then you make a joke about that.中文叫谐音梗。Is it called a pun?

It is called a pun. But pun humor is not something that comics do much anymore in America. It's kind of old-fashioned.

Nowadays we think of it kind of a dad humor type thing，something that your dad or grandpa would say, that make you as a child, oh Dad...

Don't embarrass me.

Just stop.

That's right. In English you do say dad humor or dad jokes which means pretty old-fashioned, embarrassing puns.

So hopefully in the basic episode，we have given you the basics about stand-up comedy and comedy in general, and given you some fun terms. In the advanced episode, we're gonna go deeper into humor itself and also talk about how these comic acts or these comedians，how they start their career.

Sounds great.

Thank you，James for coming to the show.

Happy to be here. Lots of fun.

We'll see you next time.

Bye everyone!

Bye.