The History of Sketch Comedy

August 28, 2023
This boisterous debut from Keegan-Michael Key, half of the sketch comedy duo Key & Peele, and his wife Elle, a director and producer, adapts their podcast of the same name to the page. Examining how humor has evolved since ancient times, they note that the first written joke dates back to 1900 BCE Sumer (“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap”) and that the bent toward the scatological continued as the Greeks developed the art of theater around 600 BCE, with poop jokes scattered throughout Aristophanes’s plays. Tracing the emergence of sketch comedy, the Keys discuss how vaudeville acts adapted their stage routines for radio in the early 20th century before such comedians as Sid Caesar found success putting on sketches for variety television shows, anticipating the rise of Saturday Night Live and similar programs. The authors are as funny as one would expect (For “the longest time, it was just straight up... white people, white people, white people, Dave Chappelle, white people,” Key writes), and brief essays from Carol Burnett, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bob Odenkirk, and other comedy heavyweights offer revealing insights into their craft (Jordan Peele suggests the endurance of toilet humor stems from the “exultation” that comes from discussing taboo topics). This is a hoot. Illus.

September 15, 2023
In their debut nonfiction book, the Keys tackle sketch comedy as a foundational aspect of Western entertainment, tracing a lineage from the playwrights of ancient Greece to the Marx Brothers and Saturday Night Live. Although the husband and wife duo are frequent collaborators, Keegan-Michael Key is more well-known publicly and is designated as our narrator here. Interspersed with the comedic analyses are autobiographical reflections on the influences, friends, and gigs that have impacted his career. These sections, though small, will entice fans of Key & Peele, the sketch show that made him and Jordan Peele into household names. But there's also plenty of material for readers with a more general interest in comedy writing. The Keys provide a generous amount of description and historical context for featured sketches, formatting the sketches themselves as if they were screenplays. They manage to translate the humor of an audiovisual medium to the page quite well, which, combined with brief asides from several other comedians, makes for a fun and funny primer on the art form.

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