In the first part of this four part episode, DET Podcast Presenter Mariem Dekhili discusses the art of comedy with award winning Comedian, Artiste, and Broadway Dancer: Mina Liccione. Dekhili discusses the reasons behind joining comedy.
Why be a Comedian?
Comedian, Artiste, Dancer, Mina Liccione: All of the above, I think that so comedy it’s a genre and it is such a wide genre, right?
You have comedy acting, musical comedy, musical threatre that have a lot of comedy in it. You also have sketch comedy, improvisation comedy and you also have physical comedy.
Comedy as a Way of Life
Comedian, Artiste, Dancer, Mina Liccione: Comedy is also a way of life.
Growing up in New York, you kind of have to have a sense of humour, you know what I mean. A lot of times you look at things and you’re like I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, and my family always chose to laugh.
Having that comedy element was always a part of my childhood. My dad is always the funniest person I knew, and his character and his humour kind of was in everything. He was a boxing promoter; this is like an Italian New York guy what are you talking about forget about the name Tony over here.
He had this amazing sense of humour and whenever he got tense, or a boxer felt stressed; he knew how to make a joke and lighten the mood.
So I learnt that at a very young age, that if I felt nervous somewhere or if I was in a dance class, and people around me were feeling stressed ... I learnt very quickly that if I made a joke, we'd laugh about it and then we would move on.
Comedy therefore found me, this is something of who I am and part of my attitude towards life.
Art reflects life and comedy has always been a part of it.
Comedy in Performance
Comedian, Artiste, Dancer, Mina Liccione: I was always cast as the comic relief in theatre or in films or as like the evil villain, like the evil stepmother in Cinderella. But it also had elements of humour with a lot of comedy in it.
Finding Her Voice: Dance to Punchlines
Comedian, Artiste, Dancer, Mina Liccione: So to go from this theatre dance background, I always had a lot of comedy.
Stomp, for example, it is a percussion show with no talking yet it has a lot of comedy.
There is a lot of physical comedy in it.
I always did comedy but I never did standup comedy.
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