An Evening with Richard Claxton “Dick” Gregory, Civil Rights Activist, Nutritionist, Comedian, and Author

Gregory, Richard Claxton “Dick” (Born, October 12, 1932, St. Louis, Mo.), African American comedian and civil rights activist whose social satire changed the way white Americans perceived African American comedians since he first performed in public. Gregory’s autobiography, Nigger, was published in 1963 prior to The assassination of President Kennedy, and became the number one best-selling book in America. Over the decades it has sold in excess of seven million copies. His choice for the title was explained in the forward, where Dick Gregory wrote a note to his mother. “Whenever you hear the word ‘Nigger’,” he said, “you’ll know their advertising my book.” In 1984 he founded Health Enterprises, Inc., a company that distributed weight loss products. In 1987 Gregory introduced the Slim-Safe Bahamian Diet, a powdered diet mix, which was immensely profitable. Economic losses caused in part by conflicts with his business partners led to his eviction from his home in 1992. Gregory remained active, however, and in 1996 returned to the stage in his critically acclaimed one-man show, Dick Gregory Live! The reviews of Gregory’s show compared him to the greatest stand-ups in the history of Broadway.

Nell Gwyn, comedian ...

Mode of access: Internet.

Life and memoirs of William Warren, Boston's favorite comedian : with a full account of his golden jubilee ; fifty years of an actor's life.

Includes p. 53-70, accounts of death, funeral, etc. of William Warren.

Life and memoirs of William Warren, Boston's favorite comedian. With a full account of his golden jubilee. Fifty years of an actor's life.

Mode of access: Internet.

The life of Mr. James Spiller, the late famous comedian. In which is interspers'd much of the poetical history of his own times.

Mode of access: Internet.

A letter from Henry Woodward, comedian, the meanest of all characters; (see Inspector, no.524.) to Dr. John Hill, inspector-general of Great-Britain, the greatest of all characters; (see all the Inspectors.)

A reply to an attack on Woodward by Hill, the authorship of which has also been attributed to Henry Fielding and to Fielding and David Garrick jointly.--Cf. UCLA.

Memoirs of Charles Mathews, comedian /

Contains fragments of an autobiography.

The tempest, : a play; by W. Shakspeare. ; With prefatory remarks. The only edition existing which is faithfully marked with the stage business, and stage directions, as it is performed at the Theatres Royal. By W. Oxberry, comedian.

"From the press of W. Oxberry, 8, White-hart Yard"--Verso of t.p.

An apology for the life of Mr. Colley Cibber, comedian /

Running title: The life of Mr. Colley Cibber.

Memoirs of John Bannister, comedian.

Mode of access: Internet.

Memoirs of Charles Macklin, comedian, with the dramatic characters, manners, anecdotes, &c., of the age in which he lived: forming an history of the stage during almost the whole of the last century.

Mode of access: Internet.

News blogs and citizen journalism : new directions for e-journalism

Even for a casual observer of the journalistic industry it is becoming difficult to escape the conclusion that journalism is entering a time of crisis. At the same time that revenues and readerships for traditional publications from newspapers to broadcast news are declining, journalistic content is being overtaken by a flotilla of alternative options ranging from the news satire of The Daily Show in the United States to the citizen journalism of South Korea’s OhmyNews and a myriad of other news blogs and citizen journalism Websites. Worse still, such new competitors with the products of the journalism industry frequently take professional journalists themselves to task where their standards have appeared to have slipped, and are beginning to match the news industry’s incumbents in terms of insight and informational value: recent studies have shown, for example, that avid Daily Show viewers are as if not better informed about the U.S. political process as those who continue to follow mainstream print or television news (see e.g. Fox et al., 2007). The show’s host Jon Stewart – who has consistently maintained his self-description as a comedian, not a journalist – even took the fight directly to the mainstream with his appearance on CNN’s belligerent talk show Crossfire, repeatedly making the point that the show’s polarised and polarising ‘left vs. right’ format was “hurting” politics in America (the show disappeared from CNN’s line-up a few months after Stewart’s appearance; Stewart, 2004). Similarly, news bloggers and citizen journalists have shown persistence and determination both in uncovering political and other scandals, and in highlighting the shortcomings of professional journalism as it investigates and reports on such scandals.

Ruptured relations : guerrilla theatre, time & Pranksterish disability performance practice

Guerrilla theatre tends, by its very definition, to pop up unpredictably – it interrupts what people might see as the proper or typical flow of time, place and space. The subversive tenor of such work means that questions about ‘what has happened’ tend to the decidedly less polite form of ‘WTF’ as passersby struggle to make sense of, and move on from, moments in which accustomed narratives of action and interaction no longer apply. In this paper I examine examples of guerrilla theatre by performers with disabilities in terms of these ruptures in time, and the way they prompt reflection, reconfigure relations, or recede into traditional relations again - focusing particularly on comedian Laurence Clark. Many performers with disabilities – Bill Shannon, Katherine Araniello, Aaron Williamson, Ju Gosling, and others – find guerrilla-style interventions in public places apposite to their aesthetic and political agendas. They prompt passersby to reflect on their relationship to people with disabilities. They can be recorded for later dissection and display, teaching people something about the way social performers, social spectators and society as a whole deal with disability. In this paper, as I unpack Clark's work, I note that the embarrassment that characterises these encounters can be a flag of an ethical process taking place for passersby. Caught between two moments in which time, roles and relationships suddenly fail to flow along the smooth routes of socially determined habits, passersbys’ frowns, gasps and giggles flag difficulties dealing with questions about their attitude to disabled people they do not now know how to answer. I consider the productivity, politics and performerly ethics of drawing passersby into such a process – a chaotic, challenging interstitial time in which a passersbys choices become fodder for public consumption – in such a wholly public way.

Humor y comicidad: la aportación freudiana

Presentado en las Jornadas sobre "El humor (y los humores) en el mundo antiguo", organizado por el Departamento de Estudios Clásicos y el Instituto de Ciencias de la Antigüedad de la UPV y celebrado en Vitoria-Gasteiz los días 16 y 17 de octubre de 2007.