Nanette (2017)

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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

Character · Theme · Audience | 8 SEP 2021

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

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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

Audience: Audience Sympathy , Anagnorisis

"And I think certainly in Nanette, Hannah Gadsby has comments on the fact that she has been using jokes as a distancing mechanism, as a way to distance herself from her traumatic experience, a way of rewriting those traumatic experiences, a way of getting the dig in before other people do."

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