Spatiotemporal Management of Stand-Up Performance: Narration and Gestures

Providing an in-depth reading of an introductory routine by English stand-up comic Josie Long off of her comedy special Trying is Good (2008), this paper is concerned with the interrelations between verbal narration and co-temporal gestures in stand-up comedy as embodied verbal art and semiotic interaction. In particular, the paper outlines a conceptual framework of narrative orientations with which to highlight how gestures and movement participate in juxtaposing and mediating various conceptual spaces and narrative perspectives to precise communicative and artistic effect. In the process, it attends in detail to how perceptions, affects, and evaluations of immediacy and authentic self-presence are semiotically construed in a markedly mediated and reflexive context of stand-up comedy.