This is an Excerpt from ‘The Artistry of Stand Up Comedy’, here.

Stand-up comedy is so very Brechtian. It is as if all comedians, consciously or unconsciously, exist at this pole of theatrical theory. The frame of comedy itself is a large, obviously unreal, artistic construction, where every element of life is turned on its head and viewed from a comedic distance. And one of the most important aspects of comedy’s artistic world is its social conscience. This is like the passionately beating heart around which all good comedy comes to life.

And it is interesting that wrapping the dark stuff of human existence around with laughter makes us feel more distant from it, and then perhaps more safe, more comfortable, and maybe more able to act in our own lives and societies…? Although I’m not arguing here against immersion as a theatrical technique…how could I? I’m so into it. But there is room for both theories, for different ways of affecting people using art. And it is true that catharsis and immersion feel really good. But the artistry of the comedians I saw also moved me, also changed me, but in a different way, and using different theatrical effects………

……..I saw both Hagen and Quinn in rooms in pubs, in tiny, cosy venues where I could practically reach out and touch them. By contrast, I saw the famous comedian Stewart Lee in grander style in the Georgian Assembly Rooms: there were chandeliers, velvety seats, a big crowd of adoring fans, and a much larger literal distance from us to him. He came on stage to the music from Bill’s death scene in Kill Bill, which I thought was a tremendously subtle and cool opening flourish, considering that the common slang for a comedian’s failure is ‘dying’.

His comedy is like a series of concentric rings of meta-awareness, like inception inside the world of a single joke. His whole set is one amazing joke, and within this he tells really, really long stories, each of which turn out to be a single, amazing joke, and these relate ironically, harmonically to the overarching joke, and when everything comes home in a big moment of coherence, it is hilarious, ingenious and satisfying.

His language is deeply poetic, and he pushes the boundaries of concepts practically off the edge of meaning, in a fascinating and thematically conscious way. One of the most powerful themes he contemplated was the Fatal Risk of Doing Comedy. He compared being a comedian to being a war hero and called the ghosts of dead clowns, like Robin Williams and Bill Hicks, onto the stage.

This was profound because it was a palpable reminder of the personal mechanics at work in comedy: that what a comedian does for his or her art is excavate innermost soul and psyche, bring its deepest material up to the light, and ring this around with irony in a transformative way…and that he or she does this for the audience, for the greater good of society, because this process transforms what is deep, dark, ambiguous and scary into a new, enlightening awareness, which helps us to handle it and understand it.

It was serious and tragic at the same time that it was brilliant, funny, enlightening and reflective of the art of comedy, because it reminded us that some of the artists who are called to this sort of service don’t make it, because the dark is too dark, and the fear is too much, and the ambiguity too overwhelming. And so here it was again: that tragicomic shimmering of things that were funny/sad/true/universal… and I felt contemplative, expanded and lit up on different levels…..