Joke performance mechanics in Nigerian stand-up comedy

Stand-up comedy in Nigeria today has become not only big business but popular entertainment. It is, indubitably, one of the most obvious of the entertainment industry boom the country has recorded since the 1990s. The overwhelming patronage it has received transcends the deep ethnoreligious divisions within Nigeria and has ensured the prosperity of its practitioners. In this paper, through a histo-cultural perspective, I interrogate the performance ‘mechanics’ of the stand-up renditions of select Nigerian jokesters. This inquiry takes the perspective of theatre and performance studies, highlighting similarities and differences, and emphasizing how stand-up comedy straddles the two disciplines. The stage ‘mechanics’ of two Nigerian jokesters, Klint de Drunk and Basketmouth are examined to show how joke contexts and stage personalities are deployed towards laughter evocation.