A Cultural History of British Alternative Cabaret (1979-1991)

An Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.

Many people will be familiar with the term ‘alternative comedy’ and what it was or what it wasn’t. They will remember its anarchic and confrontational nature, and its rejection of the traditional comedy aesthetic. Yet, few will remember that the scene and the physical spaces, the clubs, were collectively referred to as alternative cabaret. Ray Campbell’s book represents the first cultural studies investigation of the alternative cabaret scene of the 1980s and early 1990s. Campbell unearths the events before alternative cabaret and charts its rise throughout the 1980s and eventual transformation into the stand-up comedy industry we recognize today. To do this, Campbell makes use of autoethnography, ethnography, and archive study to uncover alternative cabaret’s past and interrogate its many claims.

The book departs from the position of other works on the period because it firmly situates alternative cabaret within the post-punk countercultural milieu of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Campbell also discusses how political theatre groups like CAST and movements like Rock Against Racism helped to shape the aesthetic and the discourses of the movement.