* " Comedy Tonight " — Pseudolus and Company

He assembled a syndicate and formed the Comedy Opera Company, with Gilbert and Sullivan commissioned to write a comic opera that would serve as the centrepiece for an evening's entertainment.

A year later, he finally found four backers and formed the " Comedy Opera Company " to produce the future works of Gilbert and Sullivan, along with the works of other British author / composer teams.

Carte's investors in the Comedy Opera Company advocated cutting their losses and closing the show.

Carte persuaded Gilbert and Sullivan that when their original agreement with the Comedy Opera Company expired in July 1879, a business partnership among the three of them would be to their advantage.

On 31 July 1879, the last day of their agreement with Carte, the directors of the Comedy Opera Company attempted to repossess the Pinafore set by force during a performance, causing a celebrated fracas.

The Comedy Opera Company opened a rival production of H. M. S.

This proved a success, and in 1876 D ' Oyly Carte assembled a group of financial backers to establish the Comedy Opera Company, which was devoted to the production and promotion of family-friendly English comic opera.

Carte agreed on terms for a new opera with the Comedy Opera Company, and Gilbert began work on H. M. S.

In the meantime, the four partners of the Comedy Opera Company lost confidence in the opera's viability and posted closing notices.

Carte persuaded the author and composer that a business partnership among the three would be to their advantage, and they hatched a plan to separate themselves from the directors of the Comedy Opera Company.

The contract between Gilbert and Sullivan and the Comedy Opera Company gave the latter the right to present Pinafore for the duration of the initial run.

At the end of the six months, Carte planned to give notice to the Comedy Opera Company that its rights in the show and the theatre had ended.

Sullivan, as had been arranged with Carte and Gilbert, gave notice to the partners of the Comedy Opera Company in early July 1879 that he, Gilbert and Carte would not be renewing the contract to produce Pinafore with them and that he would be withdrawing his music from the Comedy Opera Company on 31 July.

In return, the Comedy Opera Company gave notice that they intended to play Pinafore at another theatre and brought a legal action against Carte and company.

Gilbert sued to stop the Comedy Opera Company from staging their rival production of H. M. S.

* Garrison Keillor's Comedy Theater: More Songs and Sketches from A Prairie Home Companion CD ( 1996, HighBridge Company )

* A Prairie Home Companion: English Majors: A Comedy Collection for the Highly Literate CD ( 2008, HighBridge Company )

Anime Club, Chemistry Club, Chinese Dragon Dance Team, Colleges Against Cancer / Relay for Life, College Democrats, College Republicans, Comic Book Club, East Asian Studies Club, Gay-Straight Alliance, Habitat for Humanity, March of Dimes, Mock Trial, New York Times Discussion Group, Outdoors Club, Pep Band, Pocket Lint Improvisational Comedy, POWER ( Parliament of the Wittenberg Environmental Revolution ), Pre-Health Club, Sailing Club, Crew, Society of Physics Students, Student Global AIDS Campaign, Student Senate, Swing Dance Club, Union Board, University Communications, Wittenberg Art League, Wittenberg Role-Playing Guild, Wittenberg Rugby, Wittenberg Student Dance Company ( WSDC ), WUSO radio station, WittMen Crew A Capella, Student newspaper The Torch, Wittenberg Film Club, Diversity Club, Planned Parenthood, and WUSS ( Wittenberg University Speleological Society — The Caving Club ), Younglife.

He acted at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1959 and was with the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1962 Arts Theatre Experimental season ( Nil Carborundum and Afore Night Come ) 1964 ' Dirty Plays ' season Night Come, Victor and the premiere productions of The Marat Sade and the revival of Afore Night Come ), in 1965 at Stratford where he appeared in The Comedy of Errors, Timon of Athens, The Jew of Malta, Love's Labour's Lost, and Peter Hall's outstanding production of The Government Inspector at the Aldwych Theatre with Paul Scofield, Eric Porter, Donald Burton, Stanley Lebor, Bruce Condell, John Corvin and Tim Wylton among others.

Fast Forward was commissioned by Seven Network in late 1988 to take advantage of the ratings success of the Australian sketch comedy demonstrated by the high rating Australian sketch comedy show The Comedy Company, broadcast on Channel 10 in 1988.

Anderson was involved in the fledgling alternative comedy scene in the early 1980s and was the first act to come on stage at The Comedy Store when it opened in 1979.

Hicks was associated with the Texas Outlaw Comics group developed at the Comedy Workshop in Houston in the 1980s.

This can be seen in his television plays for LWT in the late 1970s and the BBC in the early 1980s and in the 1987 Talking Heads series of monologues for television which were later performed at the Comedy Theatre in London in 1992.

First coming to prominence as an original cast member on the hit TV comedy series Saturday Night Live in 1975, she went on to win back-to-back Emmy Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series on the 1980s sitcom Kate & Allie portraying the role of Allison " Allie " Lowell.

In 1979, the first American-style stand-up comedy club, the Comedy Store, London was opened in London by Peter Rosengard, where many alternative comedy stars of the 1980s, such as Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders, Alexei Sayle, Craig Ferguson, Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson began their careers.

The characters did meet, however, in the early 1980s Flintstones spinoff The Flintstone Comedy Show.

He became more widely known as a commercial actor in the 1980s, appearing with The Flying Karamazov Brothers on Broadway in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, and with Sting in The Threepenny Opera.

He started his stand-up career in the early 1980s, and won the Perrier Comedy Award in 1988 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Colin Edward Quinn ( born June 6, 1959 ) is an American stand-up comedian and writer best known for his five years in the cast of Saturday Night Live, as the sidekick / announcer of MTV's late 1980s gameshow Remote Control and as host of Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central from 2002 – 2004.

The series reemerged in the late 1980s on the fledgling cable channel Comedy Central, then again on Nick at Nite for a short time during the 1990s ( serving as charter programming for TV Land in 1996 ).

Allen was so impressed with Herlihy's voice that he used him in several of his films in the 1980s, including Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days and Zelig ; his other film credits included Martin Scorsese's The King of Comedy and Tim Burton's Pee-wee's Big Adventure.

Comedy Gold focuses primarily on sitcoms from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

From then on, he was a frequent musical guest star on network variety programs such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and A Touch of Gold and as a guest actor in network dramas during the 1970s and 1980s, such as Starsky and Hutch, and NBC movies including Of Mice and Men and McLaren's Riders.

The term became widely known in the late 1980s when the teenage character Kylie Mole ( played by Mary-Anne Fahey ) in sketch comedy television series The Comedy Company frequently used the term to disparage anyone she disliked.

He was a regular player on many anthology and variety series of the 1970s – 1980s, including such shows as The Ed Sullivan Show, The Bobby Goldsboro Show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour, Love American Style, Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Spenser: For Hire.

In the 1980s, KTMA ( predecessor to WUCW ) created a number of low-budget shows, including the cult classic Mystery Science Theater 3000 ( which later aired on The Comedy Channel / Comedy Central from 1989 to 1996 and the Sci-Fi Channel from 1997 to 2004 ).

This film is hardly shown on television due to its racial themes, though it was broadcast once on ABC in March 1983 and does sometimes appear on premium movie channels, along with the most recent airing on Comedy Central in 2011 ( though the print used was from the 1980s TV airing, meaning less-than-stellar film quality and had moderate edits ).

In August 2003, Godley's one-woman play, The Point of Yes, about Glasgow's heroin problem in the 1980s, was premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and, according to the BBC, her Fringe comedy show Caught in the Act of Being Myself was " hotly tipped " as a Perrier Comedy Award nominee.

Hagerty spent the 1980s starring in a number of theatrical films, ranging from the well-reviewed Lost In America and Woody Allen's A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy to the badly received Beyond Therapy.

During the 1980s, she lent her voice to episodes of The Flintstones Comedy Show and The Smurfs, in addition to guest roles on CHiPs, The Love Boat, and Charles in Charge.

Rodney Rude Live Volume 1 is an Australian video and DVD comedy video, starring Rodney Rude performing his stand-up act at the Sydney Comedy Store in the early 1980s.