Abstract
Stand-up comedy is a genre of performance that can provide a discursive space for negotiating social and political issues. Typically reliant on autobiographical content, embodied performance, and audience engagement, ethnic, racial, or cultural identity can play a significant role in stand-up comedy performance. Literature on the role of ethnic identity in the practice of New Zealand comedians has been limited to date. This research therefore focused on exploring the experiences, values, and practices of contemporary Māori stand-up comedians through a qualitative, ethnographically-informed, and mixed-methods approach. This included semi-structured interviews with five male Māori comedians, alongside an analysis of their set material (i.e. scripts and transcripts), presentation of self in their on-stage performances (through live and recorded shows), and off-stage professional branding (including social media pages, posters, and professional profiles). The analysis explored findings from each of these areas to show that Māori comedians adapt their practice around awareness of the ethnic makeup of specific audiences, and craft on-stage characters accordingly. Māori comedians embody the roles of “pride comedians” using comedy as a medium to resist harmful, racist, or stereotyping narratives. For this set of participants, this specifically involved performances focusing intersectional elements of their identity in relation to structural issues. The comedians examined used the epidictic quality of stand-up to change perceptions of the Māori community by the wider Pākeha (New Zealand European) population, as well as to engage in dialogue within their own communities about what it means to be Māori today.