Steven S.

Kapica
Fairleigh Dickinson University
22 November 2016

“Betting On Black”: Comedic Intimacy and the Rhetorical Space of All Jokes Aside

In 1991, entrepreneur and Morehouse graduate Raymond Lambert risked his successful

career and all his savings on a business venture with friend James Alexander. The two opened

All Jokes Aside, a comedy club located in Chicago’s South Loop that specifically catered to an

African American audience. Lambert’s obstacle-laden path to opening Chicago’s first (and only)

black comedy club—as well as the club’s unfortunate demise in 1998—is chronicled in the 2012

documentary Phunny Business: A Black Comedy and in Lambert’s recently published memoir,

All Jokes Aside: Standup Comedy is a Phunny Business (2016).

Through exploration of All Jokes Aside—the club—this paper suggests the “comedy club”

is a unique, rhetorical place—a space, following de Certeau, that is place transformed by

convention and context. The comedy club, this paper proposes, is place transformed by live

performance of stand-up comedy for an audience in a rhetorically constructed venue. The

comedy club All Jokes Aside, this paper contends, was a space within which black comedians

established a sense of community—a rhetorically constructed place, a home—that enabled an

intimacy different from other modes of performance.

That’s the proposal as it went out, with a few minor adjustments.

So. First. A bit about standup in general.

In "Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation,” Lawrence Mintz notes,

“Standup comedy is arguably the oldest, most universal, basic, and deeply significant form of

humorous expression... It is the purest public comic communication, performing essentially the

same social and cultural roles in practically every known society, past and present” (71). Wow.

That makes the study of stand-up sound important. David Gillota notes,
 While some stand-ups may position themselves as spokespersons for

“everybody” or for the entire nation (even as they claim individuality), most stand-

ups also represent the point-of-view of a particular demographic defined by

race, gender, class, or sexual orientation. The best comedians also challenge or

subvert subcultural norms and expectations. The art of American stand-up is thus

a constant negotiation between individual expression and group interest. (103)

What we get from Mintz and Gillota is clear indication of the vital connection between audience

and performer. John Limon reinforces this in Stand-Up Comedy in Theory, particularly in his

chapter on Lenny Bruce.

Put plainly: No audience; no joke. The joke functions only because it has an audience.

This is why comedians live or die by laughter. No laughter; no joke. No audience; no laughter.

The extent to which the audience determines how the laughing will occur is, for me, a matter of

rhetorical appeals and identification. For this paper, the extent to which the place of the comedy

club shapes and mediates the laughter is the thing.

Second. From stand-up in general to “black comedy.”

In Laughing Mad, Bambi Haggins writes, “Black comedy, in its literal and literary

construction, has always overtly and covertly explored the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of

African American communities” (2). Raymond Lambert’s narratives and descriptions of All Jokes

Aside attest to this very crucial, very fundamental purpose of black comedy. The testimonies

from comedians and individuals associated with All Jokes speak to both the void All Jokes filled

in the cultural life of black Chicago and to what the club ultimately meant to the African

American community: As a place for black comedians and black audiences, it provided a space

from within which comedians could explore the trials, tribulations, and triumphs of African

Americans. Steve Harvey claims, “All Jokes Aside was a mecca; when you went there to

perform, you saw black folk running a comedy club the way a comedy club should be run. Ray

Lambert took it to the next level.” Lambert writes of his plans for the club, “If we were going to
do this, our concept would be to take the best talent available, combine that with the high-quality

operations of the top clubs in the nation, and thus set a new standard in the black comedy-club

marketplace” (78-79). He continues, “Prior to us opening All Jokes Aside, there was not one

venue dedicated to comedy serving the black market” (79). In Chicago. And, based on

Lambert’s vision and telling, there was not club like it anywhere.

This is the set-up, then. Stand-up is audience contingent performance that explores,

subverts, and/or reinforces ideologies (dominant or otherwise). It also consoles, nurtures, and

(for my purposes as a rhetorician) persuades. For black comedy, however, the cultural and

political stakes were/are higher. Drawing from the case of All Jokes Aside, we can say this

because the club filled a void. There was no “home” for black standup comedy. At least not of

the variety that Lambert envisioned. All Jokes was a safe and powerful space from within which

comedians could build and shape powerful rhetoric in terms of laughter and social critique. And

the sad fact that the club no longer exists is proof of the higher stakes. A sad fact directly related

to racial politics.

So let’s talk about the club.

By Lambert’s account, All Jokes Aside became a grand success because it capitalized

on the right time for the opening of a black comedy club, and Chicago’s South Side proved the

right place for it. Chicago already had well established stand-up clubs; however, there had been

no successful attempt to specifically market to Chicago’s large, and increasingly affluent African

American population—despite the deep pool of black talent readily available to entertain a

specifically black audience. From memoir and documentary, it is easy to see that the moment

was ripe for the specific kind of place Lambert was able to create with All Jokes Aside. That

place was a carefully cultivated haven for talent; All Jokes offered a particular brand of

comedy/experience. Lambert writes,

I wanted the black comedians appearing at All Jokes to realize that this was not a

chitlin-circuit type of thing. I wanted them to appreciate our efforts to run the
 business in a dignified fashion that would always result in everyone being treated

professionally. We were operating, I thought, at a high level—not despite being

black but because we were black. (136)

“At All Jokes Aside,” Lambert insists, “we had a code of conduct not only for the comedians and

the staff but also for the audience. I insisted that the customers conduct themselves in a certain

fashion in order to do business with us” (135).

So. While All Jokes capitalized on the stand-up boom of the early nineties, it did so by

establishing a very different kind of venue—one that had a carefully cultivated aesthetic and

schema. Upscale. Conscientious. Drama drug gun free. Everyone followed Lambert’s rules.

The club began as a part-time operation—operating out of an art gallery. When the club started

to become a viable business, it moved next door and Lambert designed the space to match his

vision, his rules. What might be worth noting here is that Lambert was NOT a comedian, nor

was he an entertainer; nor was he an experienced club manager or owner. He was an

entrepreneur starting from scratch—from an entrepreneurial vision and a desire to provide

something worthwhile for the African American community. In his memoir, he reiterates—over

and over again—his status as not just an entrepreneur but a black entrepreneur.

In “Stand-Up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy,” Ian Brodie writes, “[standup] It implies a

context that allows for reaction, participation, and engagement on the part of those to whom the

stand-up comedian is speaking” (153). This is what I’m driving toward: Context is key. Brodie

adds, stand-up “is… a dialogic form, performed not to but with an audience” (154). What I’d like

to suggest is that the space of the comedy club—a rhetorically constructed place—figures and

determines context. It is the context—a multivalent medium through which comedy is delivered,

circulated, transformed, maintained, constrained, etc. And, in the case of All Jokes Aside, the

club’s failure—not of brand, not of content, but of business—black business in what has been

termed the most segregated “big city” in the country—is a sign of how politics and ideology can
(and do) constrain space. All Jokes Aside was an extremely successful place, important to the

African American community, but because of racial politics it was, well, killed…

Lambert defined a rhetorical space that mediated (and often defined) the rhetoric—er,

comedy—delivered in that place. In The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau

differentiates between space and place, noting place “is the order (of whatever kind) in accord

with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence” (117). For de Certeau, place

is fixed and space is “a practiced place,” and it “occurs as the effect produced by the operations

that orient it, situate it, temporalize it” (117). Human geographer and historian Tim Cresswell

interestingly notes, however, that de Certeau’s view of space and place, for geographers, is

flipped: “[The] idea of social space,” Cresswell writes, “or socially produced space… plays the

same role as place” in geography, where place is space imbued by the social (think space =

house; place = home) (17). Cresswell adds that “to Certeau, place is the empty grid over which

practice occurs while space is what is created by practice” (70).

I argue, then that place, in Cresswell’s terms, is rhetorical. So. That said, let’s turn finally

to what all this means: How did the defined space of All Jokes Aside become a place, and how

did it mediate the comedy delivered there.

Earlier, I claimed: The space of the comedy club is a rhetorically constructed place that

figures and determines context. I used the phrase “multivalent medium” to describe the club

itself. Let’s talk about club as medium.

As medium, the club mediates in several ways. I am using “club” as a GOD TERM that

functions in at least three ways:

1. The physical environment of the club—the actual, physical space(s) where comedy happens

mediates through arrangement of space: the club, the stage, the tables and chairs, the bar, the

alcohol… Lambert claims,

 [Standup comedy belongs] in the intimacy of a comedy club… it is best

performed and seen in a venue where the performer can see the last person in

the last row and that person can see the comedian’s eyeballs, facial expressions,

and sweat. That is when standup is magical and presented in its purest form, and

in its purest form, standup can only happen in a club. (133)

His point reinforces what many scholars have noted: Standup comedians not only operate as

social critics but as performers deeply imbricated with their audiences in time and in place.

Place matters because it constrains and affords certain kinds of rhetorical delivery. It also

matters because tone and ambiance shape both the message and the success of delivery. The

rhetorical effect of performed standup is “magical” (in part) because of place.

Immediacy. Intimacy.

All Jokes Aside succeeded because of its environment. It also, ultimately, failed because

of it—because Lambert was not willing to adapt his vision to either the changing landscape of

standup (comedians’ movement from small, intimate clubs to larger theaters and festivals

circuits), nor to his social/political ideals. As Lambert notes in his memoir, All Jokes Aside’s

“permanent” home in the South Loop had become too expensive to turn a profit—primarily

because the neighborhood became “a place for big-box stores,” Lambert writes, “and chains

that could afford to pay astronomical rent.” “I was facing a 50 percent hike in rent,” he adds

(187). In short, Lambert made the decision to move the club to a different location where racially

motivated political resistance forced him to give up the idea of continuing All Jokes Aside after a

capital draining year of litigation.

2. The environment created by and from within the physical space: Let’s call this the “club

scene.” An audience of ticket holders coming into a space to see Steve Harvey constitutes and

mediates the performance space (both through their attire—their physical affectations—and

their personae). This is a big factor in All Jokes appeal. Lambert worked very hard to maintain a
certain kind of atmosphere, and that maintenance included everything from the front door, to the

employees, to the stage setup; it extended to the audience, to his clientele.

Two points for substantiation: When All Jokes first opened, Lambert would begin the

evening’s entertainment by going out on stage and giving the following spiel: “Good evening,

ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to All Jokes Aside, America’s progressive comedy

showcase, where week in and week out, we bring you the absolute best in standup comedy.

Where no two weeks are the same, and the customer is always right” (88). From this we can

hear the tone Lambert set for the space. This later changed with the addition of George Willborn

as club emcee; however, the atmosphere was maintained through Lambert’s other efforts to

control the space.

The other is a revealing observation Lambert makes about where audience members sat

in relationship to the stage/performer and how comedians engaged the audience—from

heckling to insult: “God forbid a white person had the nerve to sit up front,” Lambert writes. “I

specifically instructed the comedians not to pick on the white folk. I thought it was a hack move,

a cheap laugh, and it usually came directly at the customer’s expense” (138). Not only did a

certain clientele enter the club, dressed in a specific way, dictated, in part, by the club’s persona,

but the audience was instructed/encouraged where to sit (or where not to sit)—and performers

were told what not to do in the interest of maintaining the goals and directives of the place.

3. Amplification. This one I’m borrowing a bit from Brodie, who cites Simon Frith, noting how ‘the

microphone allowed us to hear people in ways that normally implied intimacy — the whisper, the

caress, the murmur’ (1996: 187)” (157). Brodie adds, “The intimacy of the performance style

makes intimates of the performer and audience” (174). The microphone amplifies the

performer’s voice in a way that creates a certain kind of intimacy: A comedian can speak at a

normal volume, inflect, huff and puff, and be heard by everyone, something the audience cannot

do without the microphone. In this sense, the performer becomes the primary controller of the
context, the message; however, the delivery of that message—amplified as it is—is still dictated

to extent by the space within which it circulates, and by the occupants of that space (think:

hecklers, etc.).

Mintz cites anthropologist Mary Douglas who observes, “the joke form rarely lies in the

utterance alone, but . . . can be identified in the total social situation.” Mintz adds, “Douglas

further concerns herself with the joking activity… as public affirmation of shared cultural beliefs

and as a reexamination of these beliefs… Yet she also agrees with Victor Turner that the

experience of public joking, shared laughter, and celebration of agreement on what deserves

ridicule and affirmation fosters community and furthers a sense of mutual support for common

belief and behavior” (73). To which I say: Yup.

I’ll end with what I think is one of Lambert’s best observation: “I am enamored of the idea

of utilizing the power of standup for social change” (224). Me too, Raymond. His two narratives

do very little to show us what utilizing the power of standup for social change might actually look

like per se. However, the story of All Jokes Aside—and the persona of the black comedy club—

serves as a step toward understanding how places for comedy are made and maintained, and

how those places afford and constrain the messages delivered from within them, and thus how

those messages provide opportunities for social change. If we are really interested in exploring

Lambert’s final thought, we need to look beyond the now closed doors of All Jokes Aside. Or

maybe try to open them again.

 WORKS CITED

Brodie, Ian. "Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy.” Ethnologies 30.2 (2008): 153-180.

Certeau, Michel de. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.

Cresswell, Tim. Place: An Introduction (2nd Edition). Somerset: Wiley, 2014.

Gillota, David. “Stand-Up Nation: Humor and American Identity.” Journal of American Culture

38.2 (June 2015): 102-112.

Haggins, Bambi. Laughing Mad: The Black Comic Persona in Post-Soul America. New Lambert,

Raymond. All Jokes Aside: Standup Comedy is a Phunny Business. With Chris Bournea.

Chicago: Agate Bolden, 2016.

Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2007.

Mintz, Lawrence E. “Standup Comedy as Social and Cultural Mediation.” American Quarterly

37.1 (Spring 1985): 71-80.