Bay Area Stand-Up Comedy by Nina G

Author:Nina G
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

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SAN FRANCISCO COMEDY’S RITES OF PASSAGE

Every culture has rites of passage. These rituals tell people if they are in or out of the group and where they fall in the pecking order. Some rituals are initiations into the group. Others are hazing rituals set to usher its participants through one threshold and onto the next. Dan St. Paul observes that for San Francisco comedians, “There are two rights of passage in Bay Area comedy: the San Francisco Comedy Competition and Comedy Day.”

SAN FRANCISCO COMEDY COMPETITION

Many call Frank Kidder the founder of the San Francisco comedy scene. This is literally accurate considering that in March 1973, he founded the San Francisco Comedy Scene, a two-hour show at 9:30 p.m. on Friday nights at the Intersection Coffee House. The workshop-like environment was a place where Kidder fostered and coached comedy in an effort to nurture the post-hippie/pre–comedy boom comedians. According to Kidder’s future collaborator, Jon Fox, he and his wife met with Kidder, where they learned, “Frank had been involved in a terrible car accident, running into an oak tree at over one hundred miles an hour. He lived. The tree died. While recuperating in a hospital, another patient had cracked a joke which made everyone on his ward feel better. There and then he had decided to dedicate himself to creating laughter in the world. The design on his stationery was a drawing of that oak tree.” In a 1975 interview, Kidder was quoted: “Comedy is my life. I’m devoted to it. I’d do anything I can to promote comedy. You can use a sense of humor to communicate with people, to educate them. You can say things through comedy that you can’t say to them any other way.”

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