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Nanette (2017)

Featured In

DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!

What can screenwriters learn from the storytelling techniques used by stand-up comedians?

AI✦Applies musical contrapuntal technique as a lens for understanding Nanette’s narrative architecture, where thematic material introduced early recurs and transforms across the performance, building emotional resonance through compositional repetition and variation.✦

⏱ 2h 31m

8 SEP 2021

Character · Theme · Audience

Listen if you want to understand how stand-up comedians grip audiences and build emotional arcs (and what narrative tools screenwriters can borrow from comedy)!

▶ More Info

Standup comedians can keep audiences gripped to their every word for over an hour, and often bring them to emotional climaxes by the end. So how do they do it and what tools can apply to scripted narratives… →

Films: Nanette (2017) , Baby Cobra (2016) , Inside (2021) , It's The Fireworks Talking (2007)

Character: Character Authenticity , Audience Complicity , Character Agency , Character Introductions

Theme: Theme , Emotional Truth , Rhetorical Triangle

Audience: Audience Sympathy , Anagnorisis

"It’s a musical contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices built on a subject a musical theme that is introduced at the beginning in imitation repetition at different pitches and which recurs frequently in the course of the composition."

— chas | DZ-83: A Very Thematic Stand-up Special!