Work

Careering Through Comedy: Liminal boundaries in freelance creative work

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Comedians are well known for pushing the boundaries of taste, decency and social mores in their acts, often to hilarious effect. But professional comedians must also navigate a range of visible and invisible boundaries as their careers unfold. One of the pivotal shifts occurs with the transition from the live circuit to television. While these two domains are often seen as closely connected, live work and TV work are in fact characterized by very different rules of entry and progression. Drawing on 82 interviews with comedians and other industry players, this paper explores the risks and rewards involved in making the transition from one institutional context to another. In particular, we develop the concept of ‘liminal career boundary’ to explain how and why boundaries emerge in fluid, informal organizational contexts such as freelance creative work. This concept extends our understanding of organizational liminality as a state of disorientating in-betweenness, one that is partly objective (insofar as it is determined by key industry gatekeepers) and partly subjective (insofar as it is perceived by professionals who are attempting to cross a career boundary).

Source: Organization Studies

DOI: 10.1177/01708406251323367

Authors: Dimitrinka Stoyanova Russell, Nick Butler

Institutions: Cardiff University, Stockholm University

Language: English

Topic: Management and Organizational Studies

Subfield: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,900