ColdTowne Theater : exploring disaster humor

Disaster humor is a category of humor research that has not been much explored in terms of live audience reactions, something this study undertakes at a small improvisational theater in Austin, Texas. In generating the typology of jokes at this particular theater, instances of disaster humor in live performance were collected, coded and compared in terms of categorization and audience reaction. Ultimately this small study produced a promising look at the relationship between joke acceptance and what it meant for intergroup identity as a community, which should be further explored in future research; recommendations for this are made at the close of this work.