如果你想去上海美琪大戏院观看正在热映的周立波单口喜剧，恐怕你必须要等上一段时间了。尽管个人秀的最高票价要380元，但门票在短期内就已全部售罄。

　　If you want to see Zhou Libo's ongoing stand-up comedy at the Majestic Theater of Shanghai, you'll have to wait for a long time. All tickets have sold out soon, although the highest price is 380 yuan for his one-man show。

　　同时，就像几个月前的小沈阳以及2年前的郭德纲一样，周立波也成为各种媒体上最炙手可热的话题人物之一。

　　At the same time, Zhou has become one of the hottest topics on all kinds of media, just like Xiaoshenyang months ago and Guo Degang two years ago。

　　探讨都市生活，经济和政治问题，语言上融合了上海方言，普通话以及一些英文单词，周立波的表演已经得到上海市民的喝彩，他们渴望一位本地的笑星来对话本土文化。

　　Talking about urban lives, economic and political issues in a mixture of Shanghai dialect, Putonghua and some English words, Zhou's performances have been acclaimed by Shanghai citizens, who long for a local star to speak to their culture。

　　“或许当下，上海需要一个像我这样的表演者，我也很乐意把我的欢乐及思考赠与这个时代及这座城市，”他谦虚地说。

　　"Perhaps at this time, this city needs a performer like me, and I'm willing to offer my joy and thinking to this time and city," he says modestly。

　　尽管周立波的表演风格——被他称作“海派清口”或“上海单口喜剧”，与郭德纲的相声和小沈阳的二人转截然不同，但它们都是蓬勃发展的现场滑稽脱口秀表演的代表——现场滑稽脱口表演作为一种文化现象，近些年在中国获得越来越多的关注。

　　Although Zhou's genre, which he terms haipai qingkou or "Shanghai-style stand-up comedy", is different from Guo's xiangsheng or Xiaoshenyang's errenzhuan, they are all parts of a flourishing scene of live comic talk shows, a cultural phenomenon that has drawn more and more attention in recent years in China。

　　前不久在人民大会堂，郭德纲为人们献上了“相声来了”的开幕式演出，该系列演出将持续8个月的时间。而小沈阳也正在进行个人的全国巡演。尽管周立波坚持在家乡上海演出，但他今年的档期已经被120场演出排满了。

　　Guo just had a performance at the Great Hall of the People to open his Xiangsheng Is Coming series that will last eight months and Xiaoshenyang is touring China. Although Zhou sticks to his hometown Shanghai, his schedule of this year is already full with 120 performances。

　　去年首演的“笑侃三十年”使周立波广为人知，其中他提到改革开放以来，上海发生的翻天覆地的变化，话语幽默而又轻松愉快。这场表演的内容包括服饰流行的变革，中国股市的震荡起伏以及温家宝总理访问剑桥时的扔鞋事件。

　　In A Laughable Talk on the Past 30 Years, a show that premiered last year which made Zhou widely known, he talked about the drastic changes in Shanghai since the "reform and opening-up" in a light-hearted and humorous way. The content of this show included the changes of clothing trends, ups and downs in the Chinese stock market, and the shoe-throwing incident during premier Wen Jiabao's visit to Cambridge University。

　　“滑稽脱口秀表演者们之所以越来越受欢，是因为他们满足了大众的审美口味，人们渴望通过一些娱乐方式来缓解紧张生活带来的压力，”中央财经大学社会学院院长包胜勇表示。“尽管这种需求始终存在，但当下的娱乐方式愈加地肤浅。”

　　"Comic talk show performers are becoming more and more popular because they meet the aesthetic needs of the masses, who want relaxation to balance their tension-filled lives," says Bao Shengyong, dean of the Department of Sociology, Central University of Finance and Economics. "Though such demand has always existed, it has been made more apparent in our time."

　　现年42岁的周立波，曾计划50岁时暂别舞台然后用10年时间来环游世界，归来后继续自己的表演事业直到生命的尽头。而现在他已经改变主意了。

　　Zhou, who is 42, had a plan to stop performing at 50, and spend 10 years to travel around the world before coming back to perform till the end of his life. Now he has changed his mind。

　　“现在小学生们都很喜欢我。如果我50岁离开舞台，那他们怎么办？”他说。

　　"Now primary school students all like me. If I leave when I am 50, what shall they do?" he says。