Comedians with a Difference: The Performance Techniques of the Outsider in Stand-Up Comedy

This thesis serves as an investigation into how stand-up comedians who actively emphasise their marginality, use certain performance techniques uniquely suited to stand-up comedy in order to build a relationship with their audience. Those performance techniques are analysed for how they serve to draw the outsider comedian and their audience closer together. This investigation culminates in an examination of three comedians who have employed these techniques in such a well-crafted and intentional manner, that they not only build deep relationships with their audience, but reach a point where their unusual, unexpected, and unpopular outsider ideas have the potential to take root and grow within their audience.