Baggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition

Abstract

Baggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition. By Andrew Davis. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii + 288, illustrations, preface, notes, bibliography, index. $95.00 cloth.)Andrew Davis in his book flaggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition works to classify American burlesque comedy as part of the oral narrative tradition. He explains that despite the written tradition of the sketches, comedians never actually performed the sketches as written; they would improvise the scene on the spot based on all their previous performances of the sketch and their knowledge of what worked or failed in past performances. Davis links the working practices of burlesque comedians to the "composition in performance" of other oral narrative performance, like the Yugoslavian epic singers studied by Albert Lord and Milman Parry. Davis includes multiple written variants of sketches with the handwritten notes from the performers, which indicate alternate sections of the sketches or alternate endings.The book is loosely organized into sections outlined by the author in the preface. The first three chapters present the theoretical approach, chapters four through seven explore the craft of the performances, chapters eight and nine present the scenes themselves and the final chapter wraps everything up and explains that the lasting appeal of burlesque style humor is rooted in its ability to connect with a working class sensibility.In the interest of full disclosure, I am actively engaged in theater and identify as a playwright before identifying as a scholar. I have been involved in theater since grade school and have an intimate knowledge of the social norms and group practices of theater. With that in mind, I found flaggy Pants Comedy both incredibly entertaining-I guffawed, giggled and plain laughed out loud while reading-and very informative, especially because it provided answers to the origins of modem social quirks and jargon of theater performers.Davis' primary audience is performers and potential performers, with the hope that this book will facilitate the revival of burlesque sketches. His secondary audience is folklorists, for whom he hopes this book will open up a new realm of study that could also potentially lead to the expansion of non-textually based theater scholarship.Although Davis is targeting modern comic performers as his audience, he needs to take into consideration other readers who are not familiar with the colloquialisms of modem performers. …