Jokes and one-liners really only have two parts, even if you take a few steps to build up the tension to a punchline.

Setup: What’s grey and goes round and round?
Surprise: An elephant in a washing machine!

In this case we have a character and a situation, the beginning; and a conclusion, the punchline; but no middle with events, interactions, and changes. We might call this a proto-story.

A story always has the three parts: beginning, middle, and end. This seems self-evident, because we exist in time and as adults we have experienced many beginnings and endings. But story is a refined representation of life, not life itself. Certain elements have to appear at certain times in a story, whether or not the story is told chronologically. Beginning, middle, and end have to do with story processes and not a simulation of life at all.

So, this is what we really mean by those three parts.

Beginning: if…

• Characters
• Somewhere
• Doing something

Middle: then…

• Life changes
• The characters change things

End: resulting in…

• The character(s) are changed
• The situation is changed
• We understand why they changed

In comedy we add an extra layer to this.

Beginning: if…
(establish absurdity or normality of each)

• Character
• Somewhere
• Doing something

Middle: then…
(inversions from normal to absurd, or absurd to normal)

• Life changes
• The characters change things

End: resulting in…

• Surprise (always)
• Recognition (sometimes)
• Insight (sometimes)

School for Comedy has a sketch with a group of children pretending to be criminal investigators at a murder scene.

Characters: criminal investigators
Somewhere: at an outdoor crime scene
Doing something: performing forensic investigations

Part of the absurdity of the situation is that all characters are adults being played by children. Otherwise, the situation is put forward in a naturalistic manner.

A photographer appears in order to take photos of the crime, but he is clearly the wrong sort of photographer, since he is dressed for a wedding. He treats the situation and the investigators as if he’s still at a wedding.

Life changes: A wedding photographer arrives
The characters change things: The wedding photographer starts redirecting people’s behaviour to match the sort expected at weddings.

The photographer manages to completely subvert the investigators by getting them to pose for a group photo and say “cheese”. The sketch ends when he delivers the line: “You’re killing these pictures.”

Recognition: The photographer finally converts the investigators into a wedding party.
Suprise: The photographer delivers a cheesy punchline.

Monty Python notoriously claimed they were terrible at endings. I would dispute this claim. Take a look at their “Spam” sketch.

A couple are in a cafe where only Spam is served. The wife wants to change the menu and have a meal that doesn’t include Spam. This causes the cafe owner to argue with the woman and vikings to sing the Spam song. Eventually, the husband offers to eat the Spam for his wife. The story ended just fine. The sketch just didn’t end on a big joke (aka capper). So, they turned the concept of Spam into a running gag that bled over into another two sketches, which is a surprise and bought them time to find other places where they could engineer a big laugh.

“The Lumberjack Song” on the other hand ends with a lovely young lady crying, “And I thought you were so rugged.” A neat capper. Nevertheless, the Python crew continued their tradition of sketches running into one another and we are subsequently treated to a funny letter about transvestite lumberjacks. They were very good at milking the absurdity of the situations they created.

Not all sketch endings have to include a pithy one-liner, as illustrated by Monty Python. Sketches are a combination of joke and story. So, you will want some sense of closure in order to justify the story and make the sketch memorable.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

I have been both guest and attendee of the Williamstown Literary Festival for a number of years. Every year I have attended Shaun Micallef has been wandering around and having his say in various sessions. I have also had chats with Denise Scott, and this year Kim Gyngell was strutting his comedy stuff.

Rebecca Lister may not be a name with which you are familiar, but she is an award-winning playwriter and a presenter on 3RRR’s book review show Aural Text. She offered a workshop on the monologue at this year’s Willy Lit Fest. Since most comedy shows are basically monologues, I thought it would be worth listening to her perspective on how to write an effective one.

Here is what I learned from the marvelous Ms Lister.

All speech within a play is a representation of how people speak, not actually the sorts of things we hear said. It needs to be compact and it needs to forward the story, while remaining completely in character.

Monologues come in two types: the interior/internal and the exterior/external.

The interior monologue is about a character revealing their inner thoughts. They may be speaking aloud, but they are speaking to no one but themselves. Frequently these monologues are confessional, they will always be revealing of thoughts and feelings. This sort of monologue is also known as the soliloquy.

The exterior monologue will be directed to an other. That other could be a single character, a group of characters, or the audience. The monologue and the actor must make it clear to the audience who is being addressed. In this case thoughts and feelings are also being shared, but usually concerning relationships between characters. A greater sense of appeal can be present.

After providing this ground work, Lister presented her “Top Ten Tips for Monologues”.

The Hook

Capture people’s attention in the first two to three sentences of your speech. You don’t need to spell the complete situation out in those sentences, but you will need to suggest the scenario and give people a good emotional reason for caring.

The Grab

This also needs to be simple and quick. Here’s where you start answering people’s questions about who, what, where, and when. We must also know why this character needs to express these thoughts now. We must begin to understand the heart of their story, which will be expressive of larger themes within the play.

A way to get at this thematic heart is to write out a one page summary of the story. When you have that page, find a way to reduce it to one paragraph, then one sentence, then one to three words. Let’s say your story is about how a married couple have drifted apart and a journey to another country helps them to renew their relationship. This could be reduced to “Love rediscovered”.

Tell the Story

Tell it deliciously, excitingly, humorously, passionately, sorrowfully, yearningly, angrily, surprisingly, wistfully.

Build the Character

We must be shown by their speech who they are, what they want, why they want it, and suggest what they need, even if they don’t recognise that need themselves.

Build the World

Layer in specific details that provide physical and emotional context to the character’s situation. These details give the piece colour and a sense of tone. In a drama you might start by describing the day as grey. In a comedy you might start by saying, “I knew it was a mistake moving into a town with no donut shop.”

Rhythm and Pacing

Be aware of the musicality of your own writing. Vary the pitch of how and what is said, pacing yourself with series of pulses and beats that lead to a crescendo. Understand too that every character will have their own rhythm based on their general emotional outlook.

Read It Aloud

How does it sound? Does it flow? Does it suit the character? It’s highly worthwhile getting acting friends to read out your monologue, so you can more easily see where others may be having difficulty with the wording.

Edit

The soul of writing: rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Don’t be prissy, slash out anything that doesn’t work. But keep drafts, since some edited items can prove useful seeds to future works.

Make Every Word Count

People’s patience is even shorter for performed works than for written works.

Bring it Home

The monologue is an emotional journey. It must tell us things we could not know in any other way. As such it will have at least one moment of real surprise and one moment of “AH-HA” where the pieces fall together and you finally understand something crucial about the character.

If you want to know more about Rebecca Lister, she has a Web site you can visit here:
http://www.rebeccalister.com.au/

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Emotion

We are constantly comparing and contrasting ourselves with the people around us and the people we experience in stories, whether the stories are fiction or non-fiction. When we diverge from what seems to be standard or what we set as our standard, we question ourselves. That questioning includes whether we are feeling the right things at the right moments. Humans are a pretty insecure bunch.

On a less insecure level we are also curious about the diversity of human behaviour and experience. It’s useful to practise empathy. Empathy makes civilisation possible. More problematic is when we have cut ourselves off from our own emotional experience and seek vicarious emotional rushes from the extreme behaviour of others.

Emotion and Subtlety

When writing comedy we want to take people on an emotional journey. People tend to better remember those moments where we inspired tears or laughter, than what only intellectually engaged them. So, we want all the fervency we can pack into a five to sixty minute routine or sitcom. The problem is you can’t start with trying to deliver an emotion. You have to start with a story.

Story provides context. We know certain situations are sad, happy, or funny. If we plunk a character within sad, happy, or funny circumstances, people will automatically start interpreting that character’s behaviour as being reflective of those circumstances. Subtle acting and storytelling techniques are often the most effective, because audiences more frequently experience having to interpret emotion, rather than being confronted with someone emoting at them. They are more likely to believe subtlety.

Sergei Eisenstein is one of film’s and film theory’s earliest pioneers. He demonstrated that when you create a montage of terrifying events, if you then follow this montage with an image of someone’s face, that face can be completely neutral, but the audience will see it as expressing terror. Putting certain types of music behind a neutral face will also encourage particular interpretations.

Emotion and Exaggeration

Now you may be saying to yourself: but I do comedy, and comedy often uses emotional exaggeration. Yes, it does. You still have to understand the subtleties in order to more effectively wield your giant comedy hammer. Not everyone in a comedy routine or story is going to be exaggerating or using the same sort of exaggeration. Your comedy leads may be playing off straights in order to create a comic contrast. Your comedy lead may be mostly straight, and it’s funny when they lose their cool in an exaggerated manner.

In the new Australian comedy Woodley, Frank’s estranged wife is practical, down-to-Earth, and sober. He wants to win her back and knows he needs to bring a seriousness to his behaviour that just isn’t part of his character. So when we sense she is assessing Frank and he is making increasingly outrageous mistakes due to his nervousness, the dynamic feels right. Our own mistakes feel exaggerated when we are squirming under what we assume is a judgemental eye. We empathise with Frank and find the whole thing exceptionally funny.

Show Me the Emotion

Woodley is a particularly good example when it comes to emotion, because it almost entirely follows the old film dictum, “Show us, don’t tell us.” When Frank is standing on a bridge dressed as a giant mascot egg and is about to jump, he doesn’t tell us he’s in despair, he shows us. He doesn’t even tell us why he is in despair, we are shown that in flashbacks. We then share some of his feelings.

As comedians we often base our routines on our own lives. Humour is a way to gain perspective on our lives, but it doesn’t guarantee perspective. When we feel something deeply or strongly, the temptation is to try and enforce that feeling on our audience. So we may over-describe or over-emphasise the importance of an event. We may say “I was SO ANGRY!” rather than showing the audience angry or simply presenting circumstances that would make anyone angry.

In the end you can’t demand people feel things. You can only provide the context whereby they may allow themselves to feel emotion. This is where you have to be honest about your own feelings and you have to respect other’s feelings every time you tell a story. The better artist avoids emotional manipulation. The better artist educates us in what our emotions are and how we can make them a part of a mature and fulfilling life.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Theories of storytelling are beginning to converge, not so much because we are finding commonalities across media, but because everyone is slowly being sold on the Hollywood idea of storytelling. I find that disappointing because we are losing a richness of shared experience and worse, we are losing empathy and understanding for the breadth of human experience.

What Writers Say

Writers can say many wise and insightful things about their art, but you must remember that this is anecdotal evidence. When you read what John Gardner, Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg, or Syd Field have to say about story, one person is speaking about their experience and you will find that other people may have different experiences.

To overcome relying on a narrow viewpoint, some writers will do a comparative survey of what many respected authors have said about their work. This certainly has the potential to provide a more universal viewpoint. But don’t be fooled.

The person doing the survey may have a theoretical barrow to push. They will then selectively include in their research those people who agree with their writing theory. In proper academic research you need to demonstrate you are at least aware of the people who disagree with you. However, once a book is meant for popular consumption, intellectual integrity can be thrown out the door in favour of saleability.

The person doing the survey may be doing their honest best. However, we are all of our time and writers, as much as anyone, can be influenced by fads. Much storytelling advice is still based on the ideas of EM Forster in Aspects of the Novel. Most people are unaware of this and use his words as if they came from God. Aspects of the Novel was published in 1927 and was already an outdated work when it was released, because avant garde works by people such as Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and William Faulkner changed people’s expectations. Some tricks of the trade these authors developed became part of mainstream storytelling.

If you are not of a literary bent, just take a look at the diffences between old film comedies and new comedies. Watching some of Charlie Chaplin’s films, it’s hard to grasp why people found certain things funny. Further, the pacing is much slower than we expect today. What’s Up Doc with Barbra Streisand and Ryan O’Neal was a hit in 1972, but if you were to release it this year, people might also find it tedious and slow.

What Jungian Campbellites Say

Joseph Campbell’s ideas about mythology and archetypes have achieved cult status amongst Hollywood scriptwriters, and since these people are highly visible in our culture, writers in other media are also taking on Campbell’s ideas.

Now Campbell never earned a PhD. His work is based on textual analysis and comparison. He does this from a largely Jungian and mystic perspective. His theory concerning The Hero’s Journey has little to no basis in sociology or cognitive science. These have already disproved parts of his theory, but this goes largely unnoticed by the storytelling community. It’s much easier to stick with what you think you know, and what you may fetishistically believe will sell.

We are told by some purveyors of writing knowledge that stories such as Cinderella are archetypical, and by archetypical they mean either it has an absolute and mystical presence in a group consciousness we all share or that it is hardwired into our brains.

Cinderella is the story of a young woman, who because of her submissive goodness, earns being magically brought together with a young man of high and unearned status to become his consort. Obedience is portrayed as more important than asserting your right to humane treatment. Rescue for women must come from others. Marriage is portrayed as the ultimate reward for good behaviour. Monarchy, as opposed to democracy, is portrayed as an idyllic state.

Do people really want to enshrine the values in these old stories?

What Katherine Says

Comedy often subverts these stories because the surprise from going against expectations creates laughter. However, the laughter is also created from the recognition, at last, that these stories are just fairytales.

Comedian Carol Burnett in the 1970s played Snow White in a sketch. Only this is the Snow White fifteen years into her marriage to Prince Charming. Stories frequently end with two people marrying and living “happily ever after”. But as every adult married person knows, it’s not that simple. Every relationship will have its ups, downs, and disagreements. So Burnett portrays a dissatisfied Snow White who is facing the very real disappointments that come with age and sexism. Her problems are resolved when one of the dwarves returns and tells her how much he and all the creatures of the forest love and miss her. He is not concerned with what she looks like, but the memory of friendship and good times.

This would not be the first time that a send-up presents a more balanced and sensible approach to life.

Now this sketch isn’t perfect, a bit of homophobia is thrown into the blend. It does demonstrate that we have many more story possibilities available to us than a cliched and conservative monomyth. No one misunderstood the sketch’s message, it wasn’t inaccessibly avant garde, and people enjoyed themselves.

Imitation is a good way to learn and gain skills as an artisan in any medium. The trick is to not let yourself get imprisoned by unfortunate cultural expectations. Shake your mind loose from the dominant stories and start seeing life for what it is…then show us something new, exciting, and funny.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

When I was growing up my family moved town on several occasions. These moves were to small towns, towns that my parents felt would be safer and hold more traditional values than a city. Americans tend to characterise small towns as either places full of dumb hicks or a sort of 1950s utopia…even those who live in them.

Being the new kid in a small town is a misery. The other kids know you are a safe target for all their frustration and anger. Picking on you won’t endanger their status with the other kids.

Some kids overcome their bullied status by becoming the class clown. This usually only works with the boys. You will have heard of some comedians who made their start this way. With a girl it serves to make her even more of a target, with the other kids feeling the need to put her in her place. Don’t let anyone get sentimental at you about the innocence of childhood, that innocence disappears at a very early age.

Everyone needs friends. Given my situation as the new kid, the only solution was to open up to anyone who was willing to be a friend. These were usually the kids on the fringes.

My best friend in one of the towns where we lived was Michelle. Both of her parents were deaf, so she had developed a speech impediment. She also had wild red hair, glasses, and a wicked sense of humour. I remember going to her house, reading her Vampirella comic books, listening to her teach her budgie the lyrics to the streaker song, and laughing hysterically at our jokes.

That town had been particularly harsh. The level of violent crime there even made it to national news. Between us Michelle and I found a little slice of joy and a whole lot of resilience, despite the darkness, through the powers of friendship and laughter. I also learned a very big lesson in not judging a book by its cover. Kind and beautiful people are to be found all over the place and in the most unusual packages.

Understanding Characters

Some comedians like trading on caricatures and stereotypes of people. They use their audience’s expectations about certain groups of people and then either confirm or subvert them with their jokes. Often the comedians have had little to no direct experience of these people, or for whatever reason choose not to see beyond their own expectations.

What would such comedians make of Michelle? She would be easy to send up, if they had never met her or spent time getting to know what a big heart she has. The same is true for many other people.

For a short time I lived in Hahndorf, South Australia. That little town was frequented by members of biker clubs, particularly around Christmas. This is when members of many biker clubs band together and ride from Adelaide to Hahndorf for the Christmas Toy Run. The toys are often strapped to their handlebars and, when they reach their destination, are donated to the St Vincent de Paul Society for distribution to children in need.

I would regularly chat with this or that big fella in black leather motorcycle gear having a cappucino at one of our cafes. More than that I would ask them about their experiences travelling across country. They had some great stories. I have to admit, the description I carried in my head of these guys was giant teddy bears.

Now certainly, some bike groups are dangerous gangs. These aren’t the ones who ride up to Hahndorf, nor are they the majority. However, they are the ones who receive the most media attention and stick in people’s minds.

A couple years later I moved back to Melbourne and had a show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. A British comedian friend was helping me with my marketing. At one point we were standing in front of Melbourne Town Hall handing out flyers to our shows. I wandered up to a couple of bearded guys in biker gear, leaflet in my hand. My friend started waving at me to stop. I gave them the flyer and returned to my friend. “Don’t waste your time with those guys, they aren’t going to turn up at your show. You need to be more targeted and effective,” she said. I understood what she was trying to say. My show could be described as cute and a bit earnest, not what you would expect to be of interest to these guys. But guess who turned up that night! Two big biker guys.

Because I was willing to see beyond the biker image, I learned a lot more about who these people are, how they live, what they do, what’s important to them, and made friends. This gives me a lot more detail for telling comedic stories which include bikers and an element of truth. I also opened the door to an unexpected audience.

I have similar stories about my goth, punk, and furry friends. They are all such wonderful glorious people, if only others would take the time to discover this. I’m sure I have some of the weirdest looking audiences on Earth. I wouldn’t have it any other way. These people are life at its most creative and vibrant.

You want a successful comedy career? You want something unique and special to say that people will remember? Open up to humanity and allow yourself to discover the veins of gold.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Three elements make up the situation: characters, environment, and events. One, two, or all of these will need to be comedic in order to make the humour work. It’s possible that none of these elements separately could be comedic, but by bringing together the peculiarly disparate, comedy still ensues. However, I suspect that only works because characters start over-reacting, thereby making them comedic.

Characters

When you are performing on stage you will always be playing a character of some sort, even if that character is a humorous version of yourself. Rarely in situational comedy do you have a normal character, they will always be an exaggeration, even if it’s subtle. A character that is maintaining a sense of propriety in an out of control situation is demonstrating super-human abilities in remaining calm. Background characters who are serving as props to the main characters can be normal. Once a character gets entangled in a comic situation, they lose normality.

In Francis the Talking Mule you might be tempted to think that Peter Stirling (Donald O’Connor’s character) is the straight. After all, the talking mule is what makes the situation comic. You would be wrong. Francis delivers the straight lines and Peter over-reacts. Even Peter’s eventual acceptance of this absurdity is fantastic. Stand-up routines with puppets will often take this route.

Of course simply putting together apparently normal characters with widely varying agendas will create a similar humour without having to be quite so fanciful. Kindergarten Cop derives its humour from tough guy Arnold Schwarzenegger interacting with children. Cops are part of our normal experience. Children are part of our normal experience. A police officer trying to get the cooperation of a room full of five year-olds creates exaggerated misunderstandings and strange solutions.

Environment

Environment can be used to create “fish out of water” situational comedy. The Mr Bean series frequently uses this trope, but most especially in the movie Mr Bean’s Holiday. The title character wins a vacation to France. Early on in the film “fish out of water” is made literal by Mr Bean encountering an expensive French seafood platter and not knowing what to do with it. He is given instruction on how to eat the oysters. Sadly, he finds them nauseating and so pretends to consume them. The results are a lap full of oysters in need of disposal. Each step in this scene has its humorous consequences which leads to the next series of humorous consequences.

The film Galaxy Quest involves a story about actors who play space travellers suddenly having to confront actual space travel. They know how to deal with their fictional world on a television set, but have to draw on unusual personal resources to deal with the real thing. Role reversal stories also carry an element of environmental humour: a pauper having to cope with the complexities of royal living, a parent suddenly having to confront technological challenges teenagers take for granted.

A comedic situation brought about by a shift in environment involves exploratory and “sensawunda” humour. A character is in an unfamiliar place, they check out the objects, foods, vegetation, and people. From their ignorance they are placed in a childlike status and will make childlike mistakes, though perhaps to a monumental scale.

Events

Unexpected and outrageous events are the soul of situational comedy. They are what pump up the funny. The film Baby’s Day Out is set in the city and is a story about a child being kidnapped from rich parents for ransom. This could easily be a drama or thriller, except events lead us elsewhere. The baby sees a bird which it follows out onto the ledge of a tall building. When the baby crawls onto a two by four, it safely crawls across to another building and escapes. The movie is then a series of one unlikely event that rescues the baby after another.

A standard fantasy storytelling form is the quest. The Lord of the Rings features the quest to destroy the “one ring”. Other quests include to kill a dragon, rescue a princess, or retrieve a magical item. Each of these quests usually requires a certain set of steps in order to achieve their end. This structure easily provides opportunities for comic vignettes from each step/event. Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure features Bill and Ted questing for historical figures who can help them complete a history project at school. The process of gathering each figure leads to laughable misunderstandings and mishaps.

Raconteurs such as Bill Cosby, Garrison Keillor, and Ed Byrne love playing with this aspect of situational comedy. One of the most amazing live comedy experiences I’ve had was hearing Ed Byrne tell a story about his girlfriend while intertwining it with the story of Cosi Fan Tutte. One event after another paralleled each other, until Ed brought the story to a spectacular operatic culmination.

Conclusions

Entire shows have been successfully made focusing only on physical, verbal, or situational comedy. A certain special pleasure comes when a skilled storyteller manages to combine all three. Such classics as The Princess Bride or The Pirates of Penzance come to mind. It’s well worth the effort to try each yourself, just to see what new places it may take you as a writer/performer.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Types of Comedy: Part One – Physical Comedy
Types of Comedy: Part Two – Verbal Comedy

In the arts many people want to distinguish themselves as mavericks and heroes of originality. It’s an extension of “the chosen one” mythology. Often when they hear of someone doing something similar to their own creative thoughts, they become angry or upset. They don’t understand that skill and artisty in execution are more than three quarters of any creative product. Several people could be working on precisely the same idea. The one who best communicates that idea to their audience wins. However, if they all do a superb job, usually people are thrilled at being able to extend their enjoyment. The Twilight book series didn’t suffer as a vampire story because of Buffy The Vampire Slayer‘s pre-existence, quite the reverse.

When you are just starting out in comedy you have to make some compromises on the behalf of your audience. I am not talking about compromises to artistic integrity, just being flexible enough to include your audience in a show’s creation. Absolute originality is not going to serve you. You need points of recognition to hook your audience.

You

If you are already an A-list comedian, then you are the point of recognition for your audience. Your show can be outrageously original and because people trust you to be entertaining, they will purchase tickets. Of course then you have to deliver. Reputations have been lost when in the name of originality performers forget their audience.

Associating with the Great

Associating with the great is an easy call for gaining attention. Almost too easy. I used to judge for a literary award and if a book was based on Shakespeare, it made no difference what the quality of storytelling was like, it went into the finalist list. I have to admit, this made me mad. The judges were not relying on their own considered opinion, but upon a cultural determination of greatness, which was then transferred to the authors whether or not they had earned it.

However, if a comedian puts in the work and gives us a fresh perspective on well-loved stories and personalities, I’m as keen as the next person to give their show a looksy. I have seen shows humorously covering The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Thunderbirds. I have seen hilarious impersonations of Abba, the Goons, and The Queen of England.

This material works best for both the beginner comedian and the seasoned veteran. The beginner gets a leg up using the well-worn. A seasoned veteran brings love and insight to their portrayals of creative heroes.

Subject Matter

Subject matter is a regularly used point of recognition. Make a show about football and you will have many footy fans turn up, whether or not they know anything about you. A show about dogs will certainly draw in the dog-lovers, it also will provide a commonality of experience that makes it very easy to tell certain sorts of jokes. You simply have to say the words, “stepping in poo”, with a pained look and people will burst into laughter…they’ve all done it.

Some subjects sit on the edge. Tripod could successfully perform a show about Dungeons & Dragons, because people already know them. Others using similar material will attract a small dedicated audience, but the geek appeal may only go so far.

Completely original subjects done by unknown artists probably shouldn’t open at a big comedy festival. The Melbourne Comedy Festival last year had over 300 shows. People will scan through the festival guide and bypass the unfamiliar: too much competition to even bother spending the time and money. The people who go to fringe festivals are willing to do more experimenting. If you start there and develop good word of mouth, by the end of the festival you could be enjoying a full-house. This freshly minted reputation can then be carried with you to the comedy festival. Claudia O’Doherty did this with her show Monster of the Deep: 3D and Telia Neville in While I’m Away.

Word of mouth is your most potent point of recognition. Though you can achieve it virally, you will only sustain that point if you nurture and build your reputation through regular contact with people. This can be achieved using YouTube, FaceBook, street performance, open mic nights, fringe festivals, etc.

Certainly, marketing and publicity can go a fair way in making you a recognisable commodity. Even then, it will give your posters extra mnemonic energy if your face is then associated with the well-liked and familiar. In the meantime learn to be at peace sharing in your culture’s passions, while mixing it up with your creative genius. Your time of utter originality will come.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Not long ago I was out flying my kite. It’s a delta wing that flies well even in low wind. I find kite-flying a great way to get outside and enjoy the weather. More than that, the simple enjoyment of playing with the wind helps me to clear my mind and relax. I did a lot of kite-flying when I was at university.

On this particular day a friendly gentleman wandered up and mentioned he remembered kite-flying as a kid, and complimented me on having a healthy “inner child”. I tossed back my usual joke, “Inner? My child is all outer.” However, inside I felt annoyed.

Why. Why did he see flying a kite as a preoccupation of childhood?

Kites were used in China around 2800 years ago for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signalling, and communication for military operations. The understanding of aerodynamics that came with kite-flying made the first functioning airplanes possible. When I was a child men were still messing about with kites in the same way that some men still go fishing.

Our culture has been creating a larger and larger divide between what is considered appropriate for adults and what for children. And I could say, isn’t it a shame what we are losing as adults, but children are losing too.

Marketers know that it is easy to sell to people’s egos. A child’s ego is directed toward wanting to be more like adults or at least the older kids. At a certain age, if something is seen as for “little kids”, children will want to disassociate themselves from it and are unlikely to ever return to that something as they get older. Our culture over-values status, dominance, and power: and youth is seen as a stage of powerlessness.

This divide has a strong impact on comedy. Humour is all about play, and play is too often seen as the domain of children.

Adult Humour
blue language, sex, drugs, politics, satire, cynicism, violence

To be taken “seriously” some comedians will go straight for the material that would give them an “M” to “R” rating on TV. This sort of comedy appeals to crowds who might feel uncomfortable and vulnerable enjoying the childlike.

I’m a great fan of good political humour. Good satire is always fun. I have no problem with blue language used for emphasis or reality, or played with intelligently. Sex jokes can be told to emphasise our humanity, and not just to demean certain portions of the population. And I do not feel insulted or threatened by a cheerful pun. The range of my enjoyment goes beyond only that which is dark.

However, I have sat in venues where if you came on stage with a happy smile and a light quip, you would be met with stony silence. Sadly, many of these are the pubs where open mic nights are available.

It’s not a problem that such humour and such venues exist. This may be how some people need to blow off steam. It is a problem when other venues do not exist to promote and develop lighter humour and encourage people to see it as part of the spectrum of adult comedy.

Childish Humour
farts, burps, gurgling tummy, poop, piddle, vomiting, gorging, petty vengence

I enjoy characters such as Mr Bean or Frank Woodley. Certainly Frank and Mr Bean can have their childlike moments, but much of their humour derives from childishness.

In one performance Colin Lane, Frank’s comic partner, bellows, “Don’t you touch me!” and aggressively points his finger at Frank. Frank decides to mock Colin’s pronouncement by putting his mouth over Colin’s finger. The absurdity and humour comes from the fact that this is an adult behaving in a manner we would expect from a twelve year old, not a man in his thirties.

Mr Bean has an adventure at the swimming pool, which starts with his attraction to elephant shaped water slides. He climbs onto the slide and before he can launch into the pool, the pool supervisor blows his whistle and warns Mr Bean off. Because Mr Bean sat on the slide while his trunks were still dry, when he climbs off we see a round wet patch on his bottom that looks like he piddled.

Both of these characters use the tropes of childhood to develop their comedy. Nevertheless, their material is aimed at both young and old, and their television shows first aired to a mixed audience. In re-runs their shows were then marketed to children. Yet, if you go back over the jokes, many of them were squarely directed at the adults. Shows such as The Muppet Show, The Simpsons, and Southpark have met the same fate.

Interestingly, childish humour becomes adult humour when taken to the extreme. A large man able to fart so loudly and offensively he is able to clear the room proves that, though he is unable to control his bodily functions, he can do so in a way no child could achieve.

Childlike Humour
whimsical, imaginative, colourful, optimistic, clever, nonsensical

This is humour that gets classified as belonging to children. I would say it belongs to all of us and deserves respect. Some of the most popular television shows and television personalities dip heavily into this well.

I suspect neoteny has something to do with this humour.

Neoteny is the retention of childlike traits by adults. We see this in dogs who no longer seem to look or behave like their wolf ancestors, except if you examine the characteristics of wolf cubs. The neoteny of dogs was crucial to forming an evolutionarily successful relationship with human beings. They needed to have reduced aggression and a greater capacity to bond with non-wolf creatures.

Neoteny was also crucial to our own evolution. The child stage of most mammals is a time of playful practise of skills, intense learning, and an ability to peacefully co-habit with brothers and sisters. Once a mammal has learned all it needs to survive, it may lose these characteristics to focus solely on feeding, reproduction, and survival. In adulthood no longer can a mammal rely on a parent to protect them and give them the space to retain these characteristics. Yet, since our species selected for intelligence and community as its means of survival, we needed to retain the childlike abilities to learn and peacefully interact with one another.

When we laugh and play, when we cheerfully plug away at problems until we have solved them, we are celebrating what made us successful as humans…neoteny.

It is only now with the sheer volume of humanity that people have been able to rely on the technical, medical, artistic, etc creativity of a few and shut down important childlike abilities. People seeking power may indulge in this atavism, not realising that they are also reducing our ability to survive.

Jim Henson’s Fraggle Rock was aimed at children. It also focussed on teaching children how to use play as a means to finding solutions to conflict and endangerment. These were meant to be skills they could carry with them into adulthood. Adults used a computer game called Foldit to solve a molecular puzzle that could lead to a cure for AIDS. One of Albert Einstein’s most famous quotes is, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.”

We need to create a world where it is safe to be ourselves without having to prove our importance. That’s from where the child/adult divide begins. When we can laugh long and loud with anyone of any age, when we can laugh with a sense of freedom and joy, we will have achieved a world of peace. Comedians you have a very important role in all of this. Go cuddle a teddy bear on stage with pride.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

The problem with the above quote is that comedians are leaving the defining of comedy to academics. Academics often have a narrow sense of humour. It’s kind of like having someone who has never been near a child, but has a PhD in education, tell a teacher how to manage a room full of seven year olds. From secondhand knowledge they might have one or two useful ideas, but really they are more likely to stir up kidageddon.

What we want are people within our own field defining and redefining comedy. And not leaving it to others alone. We need people who take the time to be self-reflective and have something useful to offer to our next generation of comedians. Their answers may be different, they may even conflict, but they should be grist for the mill.

My Definition

What is comedy and what makes something funny are in fact two different things. The one is about the material, the other is about the delivery. You could be reading from a book of jokes, but if you don’t know how to communicate those jokes in a funny way…no laughs. So understand that a good definition of comedy will help you to create the seed of humour, but you will have to develop an extra set of skills for performance.

So here’s my definition:

Comedy is a humorous deviation from the normal and ordinary in human affairs into the abnormal and extraordinary, provided the consequences of this deviation are ultimately minor.

To understand how this works I have a graph in pretty colours.

Normal

We mostly live within the range of normal and ordinary. This is the baseline for everything else in comedy.

In fact many normal experiences pass without conscious note. So upon occasion when someone notices certain normal experiences, those experiences may feel abnormal. In fact it’s our awareness of them and willingness to speak of them that’s extraordinary and becomes a point of comedy. People don’t commonly speak about poop, it’s mundane and socially taboo, so doing so in detail can be funny.

Normal also becomes funny when someone’s perception of it is abnormal. Accidentally spilling spaghetti sauce on a new shirt is rather every day. Someone seeing it as a major disaster, because it might ruin their chances with a potential partner, is comedy.

Social Norms

I probably should have illustrated social norms as a much finer line, but then I would have no room for the words “social norms”.

This is aspirational normality: everyone is thin, young, has pects, owns two cars, has a two storey house, 2.5 children, is straight, goes to church, and votes “more for me, less for them”. If they could achieve the social norm, people feel they could achieve social safety, acceptance, and happiness. The fact of the matter is, hardly anyone ever feels like they have achieved or can achieve this norm. This is from where the marketing bonanza blossoms. Marketers love creating unattainable social norms in order to play on your insecurity and sell you bogus solutions. The only way out of this commercial nightmare is to learn how to accept yourself and accept the diversity of others.

Comedy plays a lot with the divergence between actual normality and social norms. The two main types of comedy found here deal either with extraordinary attempts to reconcile normal with social norms or the deliberate transgression of social norms.

The TV show Miranda deals with an extraordinary woman who is unusually tall, owns a shop, and sells joke paraphernalia. None of these are bad things, but they put the character of Miranda squarely outside social norms. Her best friend Stevie, who manages the shop, represents the things Miranda feels she would like to be: pretty, petite, competent, and attractive to men. Her attempts at correcting her perceived flaws fuels much of the comedy.

George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” routine makes explicit the absurdity of fearing and legislating against certain language. His actual use of those words transgresses against the social norm of using only “polite” expressions. Carlin is transgressing in order to change this social norm toward one more respectful of genuine free speech. Others have used blue material in order to express rage and to assert belonging to a particular class or group of people. The social norm as represented by the media is staunchly upper middle class. Liberally using the Anglo Saxon instead of Norman words such as “defecation” and “copulation” can mark someone as part of the conquered and working classes.

Material playing with social norms exaggerates those norms in order to make clear what’s problematic.

The Abnormal & Extraordinary

Most comedy grounds itself in the normal and social norms as a sort of trampoline from which it leaps into the extraordinary. But this is not entirely necessary. The Young Ones, Mighty Boosh, and most animated features start within an absurd and surreal world that looks back at mundanity as the unusual state. We find it funny when an abnormal creature such as a dragon sits up and takes a spot of tea with milk and sugar. Being a dragon isn’t funny, drinking tea is.

The abnormal and extraordinary goes from something as simple as misspelling words on a cake to popping popcorn using the laser from a military aircraft. The extremity of the abnormality does not in fact make the comedy funnier, just different. Levels of exaggeration simply indicate varying types of comedy. Mrs Doubtfire has only one point of absurdity, and that’s Robin Williams dressing up as an older woman. In Shrek the whole world is absurd. One of the endearing things about the original Star Wars film was its subtle sense of humour. Though, Hollywood “experts” on comedy will push you to go for the big yucks.

Conclusion

I have seen such definitions as “comedy is truth and pain” floating about. This makes comedy sound profound and macho, which is appealing to some people’s egos, but it doesn’t help when you are sitting in front of your computer trying to write material. Comedy is not truth. Sadly, it has been used too often to reinforce toxic social norms and humiliate the vulnerable in our society. However, comedy can effectively be used to communicate truth and get people to listen. Comedy is not pain, it only feels that way when you’re struggling with writer’s block. However, comedy can alleviate pain by lighting up an otherwise dark day.

I hope you find my definition a good functional basis for understanding and developing your own comedy. Perhaps in a later post I will find a funny way to put it. In the meantime live, learn, and laugh.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

One big surprise was that the kids didn’t have a solid grasp on the concept that a story needs a beginning, a middle, and an end. This sounds obvious, because anything that exists in time automatically has these things, but not in the sense of creating a coherent story. So we had to discuss what makes up a beginning, what makes up a middle, and what an end. I will probably write an article about this in the near future.

The other discovery was that in going through my comedy elements, I seemed to have missed one widely used comic trope: frustrated ambition.

Frustrated ambition is where comic characters are overly focussed on attaining a goal, and are repeatedly foiled in their attempts to achieve it.

This often relies on exaggeration, one of our other elements. The comic character’s desire for their goal is inflated. So much so that they lose perspective on why they want this goal, whether or not they really need it, or if perhaps something better might be achieved by shifting their goal, and will take extreme measures in their pursuit. Sometimes they have lost sight of their true goal by getting overly caught up in a particular obstacle.

Probably the most classic example of frustrated ambition is Wile E Coyote. Wile E is portrayed as a scrawny desert coyote. However, he doesn’t seem to need the roadrunner for food. Otherwise, he might be willing to shift his goal from catching a roadrunner to catching anything edible. No, our coyote is a proud fellow who revels in his intellect. He must catch the roadrunner in order to establish his cunning and superiority. His desire is great, but his need is trivial…this is from where much of the humour arises.

The film Mousehunt is about two brothers who are doing all they can to rid their house of a mouse. They both start out with the reasonable desire of wanting to reclaim their lives after losing their jobs. That goal shifts to one of greed when they inherit a house that could be worth millions, then further shifts to eradicating a mouse when it seems to be in the way of their greed. The brothers get further and further away from what they need by losing perspective and fixedly following what they want. Their desire is great, their need is great, and they easily get caught up in trivialities.

In Buster Keaton’s short film “One Week”, what Buster and his onscreen bride want is to build their first home using a kit. However, one of her old beaus seeks revenge by changing the numbers on the kit boxes. We the audience know that Buster and his bride’s efforts are now doomed, but they don’t. The humour comes from the surprising ways in which their attempts to build the house fails and our empathy with their frustration in coping with a DIY project.

Frustrated ambition is the comic element that lends itself most to parables. We experience comic characters’s skewed viewpoint, and find humour in recognising how they are missing a bigger and more sensible picture. Mind you with Wile E Coyote some people come away inspired by Wile E’s humanity and indomitable spirit. “If Wile E can keep at it, despite the seeming impossibility of his task, then so can I…”

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Elements of Comedy Introduction