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

The jokes themselves are largely about playing with language. Even when a joke is about the absurdity of some aspect of life, like companies pandering to the health-conscious without making an effort, it might be done through an oxymoron such as “all natural artificial flavouring.”

This means that verbal comedy does not alway translate well from one language to another. However, it’s not impossible. Puns exist in Japanese as well as English. So if you wanted to perform in Japan in Japanese, you would have to do some research to create different puns for your routine. Many Japanese parents joke that their children are kawaii/kowaii: the one word means “cute” and the other “scary”. The words sound similar and, yes, children are often both cute and scary.

So here are some categories and examples of verbal humour.

What You Say

It may seem obvious that WHAT you say is crucial to verbal comedy, but remember that not everyone knows HOW to tell a joke to make it funny. I will deal with that later in this post.

Overstatement and Understatement

These are forms of exaggeration that often work with other types of verbal humour such as simile. Types of overstatement and understatement include:

Hyperbole—exaggeration that is not meant to be taken literally. “The baby weighed a ton.” “She was as light as a feather.” However, sometimes the humour comes from saying something that sounds like hyperbole, then demonstrating that it is fact. “The baby weighed a ton; not surprising since it was twelve foot by twelve foot at birth.” We could be talking about an elephant, whale, or an outrageously large human baby.

Meiosis—a euphemism that understates a situation. “The Pond” as a reference to the Atlantic. “It’s just a flesh wound” said when a knight in Monty Python’s Holy Grail has his arms and legs hacked off.

Litotes—Using a double negative to express a positive. This is very popular in Australia. “(S)he’s not half bad” referring to a good-looking person. “Gran’s not unhappy with the move” could mean Gran likes the new place. However, Australian humour being what it is, this could be meiosis and she’s spitting mad.

Poetic Language

Calling this type of comedy “poetic” may cause people to think we’re getting hoity-toity. But isn’t the very word “hoity-toity” funny? And it’s a rhyme. Poetic language gives a lovely texture to comedy, adding an extra layer of pleasure when you are playing with sounds and rhythms as well as meanings.

Rhyming—when words sound the same. You can have both full rhymes and half rhymes. Full: kitten/bitten. Half: ladies/bodies. Cockney slang is based on rhymes. Many people have heard “apples and pears” as the Cockney slang for “stairs”. Dr Seuss created humour by inventing absurd words to fill in a rhyme.”When beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles…they call this a muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle.” (Fox in Socks) Ever hear of “tweetle” before? Lewis Carroll is famous for absurd rhyme, “O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

Alliteration, assonance, consonance—These all deal with same individual sounds. Alliteration is when all the initial sounds are the same, as in “Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.” Assonance is when you repeatedly use certain vowel sounds, “I like white tires, they slice ice with wide files.” Consonance is when you repeatedly use certain consonant sounds, “The putrid dappled donkey galloped wide of the dandelion field.”

Onomatopeia—when a word sounds like the thing it is describing. A steak “sizzles”. A child “hiccups”. I will warn people, many words are only considered onomatopeia because of cultural expectations. In English we say, “meow” for a cat, “hoot” for an owl, and “woof” for a dog. But in French you would say, “miaule”, “hulule”, and “vaf”. In China the dogs go “wang wang”.

Simile/Metaphor—making a comparison. Similes frequently use the words “like” or “as”: her eyes were like sapphires. Metaphors will describe something by calling it something else: her eyes were sapphires. Similes and metaphors are a particular favourite for creating comedy. Rowan Atkinson was regularly using them as Black Adder: “Since then, we’ve made as much ground as an asthmatic ant with a heavy load of shopping.”

The Misuse of Language

We all enjoy laughing at a slip of the tongue. Sometimes it is used to show a character is flustered, foolish, or perhaps drunk.

Malapropism—accidentally swapping words with similar sounds and sometimes creating a humourous new meaning. Stan Laurel, “We heard the ocean is infatuated with sharks.” (instead of “infested”) In New Scientist an office worker described a colleague as “a vast suppository of information”. (instead of repository) When the worker apologised for his “Miss-Marple-ism” New Scientist reported it as possibly the first time “malapropism” has been turned into a malapropism.

Spoonerisms—transposing letters between words. When someone meant to say “Is it customary to kiss the bride?” and instead says “Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?”, you might assume they are extremely nervous or drunk. The phrase is funny, but so is the vulnerability that it reveals. One of my favourites was a British announcer saying, “All the world was thrilled by the marriage of the Duck and Doochess of Windsor.” Ducks are funny.

Mondegreens—Mishearing words in a phrase and replacing them with close sounding words. The one I’m guilty of is mishearing the song “Kyrie Eleison” as “Carry a Laser”. Others include: “There’s a bathroom on the right” for “There’s a bad moon on the rise” and “‘Scuse me while I kiss this guy” for “‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky” from Purple Haze.

Play on Meaning

Puns—when words sound like one another but have different meanings and/or when words look like one another and have different meanings. “I did a theatrical performance about puns. Really it was just a play on words.” In this case the word “play” both looks and sounds the same in the two senses it is used, but the punchline relies on meanings of either “play” meaning theatrical production or “play” meaning a game. Tom Swifties are a pun based on the description of how something is said. “We just struck oil!” Tom gushed. “Pass me the shellfish,” said Tom crabbily. I would classify “syllepsis” as a form of pun, though it relies solely on the different ways a verb can be used. Michael Flanders wrote in “Have Some Madeira M’Dear”, “She lowered her standards by raising her glass, her courage, her eyes and his hopes.”

Euphemisms—a way to delicately describe something that might be considered offensive. “Airbrush your undies” for farting. “Reviewing today’s menu” for burping.

Double entendre—most often sexual innuendo, but any straightforward statement that has a second potentially offensive meaning. Puns are frequently used for this: “A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.” These only work if you are familiar with various euphemisms. So, it requires some knowledge of common spoken culture: “hole” for “asshole” or “anus”. In the movie Naked Gun Leslie Nielsen’s character famously appears to be looking up Priscilla Presley’s dress and comments, “Nice beaver”. She then passes him a taxidermied beaver.

Oxymoron—a pair of words, often adjective-noun, that are apparently paradoxical. Well known oxymorons are bitter sweet, living dead, and virtual reality. George Carlin is well known for making a humorous case that military intelligence, business ethics, and freedom fighters are oxymoronic.

Non sequitur—a factual statement followed by an absurd conclusion. “If the sun is 23 degrees off of high noon, and we haven’t had daylight savings yet, I would say it’s time for an ice cream.” Ralph Wiggum from the Simpsons: “Martin Luther King had a dream. Dreams are where Elmo and Toy Story had a party and I was invited. Yay! My turn is over!”

Paraprosdokian—Hah! Say THAT one fast. This is basically a word that describes the one liner: a statement that ends with a surprise. The two part one-liner is a simple setup and payoff joke: “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it,” Groucho Marx. Slightly more complex is the introduction, validation, violation joke: “Every successful date will include three things–romance, respect, and a ton of chocolate.”

How You Say It

Timing is certainly an important part of verbal comedy. You don’t want to rush into a punchline, because people need a moment to be prepared for the full impact of your surprise ending. You don’t want your pacing to be too slow, or people may lose interest in what you have to say. Understanding where to put emphasis through starts, stops, and pauses is tightly linked to comic characterisation.

Prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Take a simple phrase like, “Could you please smile.” Someone about to take a photograph might say this in a calm even tone. “COULD you please smile,” might be said in a way that indicates frustration and anger. If you add a tight smile to the person saying this, a certain irony creeps in. “Could YOU please smile,” indicates a particular person is called upon to smile. “Could you PLEASE smile,” is begging. “Could you please SMILE,” indicates that people are doing something else, like crying or arguing.

Sarcasm is when you say one thing and mean something entirely different. Often prosody is involved to make the sarastic intent clear. “I am SO happy you invited me,” may be how someone sarcastically expresses being unhappy about an invite. The emotion expressed in the reverse may be funny in itself…a bit of vocal absurdity. However, humour may also be derived from the fact that we understand the subtext, when others do not. If the inviter doesn’t recognise the sarcasm of the invitee, that person may inflict more unwelcome invites.

Mimicry is when you imitate the speech characteristics of another person. This can be done in a cheeky manner, whereby the comedian is directly sending-up the person with whom they are speaking. It may be used to emphasise the strangeness of foreign accents. A comedian can also be caricaturising public figures by exaggerating their speech habits. People enjoy the sense of recognition. They also enjoy some of the mockery.

Funny voices takes mimicry to a meta level. The comedian extracts those elements of speech that we find funny no matter to whom we apply them: high voices, low, voices, fast-talking, slow-talking, mispronunciations, etc. You don’t even need words. The space aliens in Sesame Street are well-loved for their nonsensical alien speech.

I’m pretty sure I haven’t exhausted this subject. I hope you find enough here to start playing around and using maybe a few twists of language you haven’t tried before. Verbal comedy is a place where real wit can be brought into a story, play, television show, or film.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Types of Comedy: Part One – Physical Comedy
Types of Comedy: Part Three – Situational Comedy

I have spoken about this before, but I wanted to say this again in quotable form in order to update people’s ideas about comedy.

Pain is a fertile subject for comedy because we all experience pain. Vengeance is a fertile subject for comedy because we all experience anger and frustration with some people and situations. However…

When a child falls down, looks startled for a moment, then runs off laughing—that’s comedy.

When a child falls down, breaks its spine, and must live in a wheelchair for the rest of its life—that’s tragedy.

It’s only comedy when the consequences are trivial and/or temporary.

These are important distinctions. One helps people to release a little steam, the other encourages a meanness of spirit that is wholly unnecessary. Think Wile E. Coyote who can be standing there, fur in tatters, dark burn marks, and swaying in pain, then only moments later he’s recovered and making his next plan of attack on the Road Runner.

Yes, the line between acceptable and unacceptable portrayals of pain does change as we grow and become more thoughtful and respectful people, but that’s as it should be. I am more than happy to live in a world where, as Dr Seuss puts it, we all “eat rainbows and poop butterflies.”

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Have fun!

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

Comedy is an art of constant refinement. You write a joke, you tell a joke, you gauge people’s reactions, you rewrite it, then try the joke again and do more gauging. It can take some time to develop five minutes of solid material. Developing an hour’s worth of show can feel like a Herculean task. Add to that remembering all you have written and still being able to interact with the audience.

Having something around which you can structure your show can make the process easier. It all becomes more paint-by-numbers. It also makes your show more memorable.

Bags O’ Jokes

The most common structure for the beginner is bringing together all the jokes they’ve told so far and gathering them under a few subject headings (our bags o’ jokes). Often the jokes in one bag are only loosely related to one another. The subjects themselves may not be related at all. You could be hopping from relationships, to dogs, to the latest news item.

Various long time professionals use this structure and are successful with it. However, you will have to work harder to keep the laughs steady and to ensure people remember what you have said well enough to spread the news. Structure is a mnemonic device: the more structure, the easier to recall for both you and the audience.

Adding Theme

I highly recommend comedians give their show a theme. This gives their jokes direction. It also makes the show more marketable.

When you have a theme, you select subjects that are related to that theme. The jokes within each subject generally must also be related to the theme or get thrown out. You can also think about placing your best joke within each subject near the end of that set, and the best group of jokes at the end of the show.

For instance your theme could be about how you have troubles finding the right partner. Your first subject could be about using online dating sites, your next subject could be about the dates, and your final subject could be about when things get serious.

Relationships is a subject everyone understands. You can easily create a logical and focussed trajectory through your jokes. Your audience will anticipate your next step, generating excitement. This doesn’t mean you won’t be throwing in twists and turns and plenty of surprises. In fact their very anticipation makes such surprises simpler to build into your show.

The marketing side comes in because with your theme you can start creating advertising images that reinforce what your show is about and attract audience. People may be interested in your humour, but if it’s your humour AND it’s about something that interests them such as vampires, you’ve given them extra reason to dust your seats with their tail-feathers. Your theme will also find you media outlets for promoting your show. If your theme is about DIY disasters, then magazines about plumbing, carpentry, and carpet laying may all be interested in what you are up to.

Sub-theme

Sub-themes aren’t neccessary, but they do enrich a show and keep it from getting overly simplistic. Audiences love the interplay of minor and major characters. They love experiencing how parallel constructions will ultimately impact upon one another.

Let’s say your relationships show focusses primarily on your dating experiences and finally finding the perfect date. If you are a male comedian, perhaps you then also talk about your sister’s dating experience. This would be the sub-theme. Your jokes could then compare and contrast your two experiences, making various humorous observations possible.

Story shows

A story show will require loads of structure.

You will have to have a beginning (if this set of circumstance and this inciting event), a middle (then these things will happen creating more and more tension), and an end (resulting in a climactic event and these consequences). Freytag’s pyramid is one of the early descriptions of this dynamic. Your theme gives your story focus, but now plot drives the characters’s actions to a conclusion for us to consider.

Unique to live comedy, though, is a lack or foreshortening of denouement. The final punchline or capper is going to complete the story in one defining moment, without any further time to wrap up loose ends.

In our brother/sister dating show you might make them highly competitive. They might make a bet as to who can get to third base fastest with a new love interest. Situations get more and more tense as they try to outdo one another and impress their dates. Inevitably both of their stories will need to collide by the end of your show ending things in disaster and generating laughs.

A story is utterly memorable. It can potentially keep your audience at the edge of their seats, give them jokes at which to laugh, characters to love and hate, and an interesting tale. Storytelling is no easy task and requires considerable skill. Done successfully it’s immensely satisfying.

Remember that all these structures are merely tools. The one that works for you is completely legitimate. The laughs are what counts. I would say that it’s worthwhile playing around with each before settling into the one that suits your style. Do not confuse lack of experience with lack of ability in your choice. Mostly, as always, have fun.

Peace and kindness,

Katherine

One thing that Barker does exceptionally well that other comedians should take note is RESEARCH!

This year a number of Americans and Brits told jokes that were only relevant in their own countries. One comedian asked, “Do you have (insert name of TV show) in this country?” When his Australian audience looked bewildered, he explained the premise of the show then told a joke concerning it. Unsurprisingly, all he received was polite laughter.

This is hardly professional joke telling. Visiting comedians should be asking these sorts of questions BEFORE they go on stage and not during. They should not be expecting to bring their routines whole-cloth from one country to another, sometimes even one city to another. To do so comes off as either lazy, arrogant, or both. Why should we know about British regional accents? Do you really expect us to have imported every single TV show ever produced in the US?

A baffled audience isn’t going to enjoy your routine. However, if you have done your research, not only do you avoid any gaffes, you have the opportunity to sweeten your audience with local references. This is what Arj Barker did in his show Eleven.

Barker noticed that Melbournians find the American pronunciation of their city funny. So, he pronounced it according to local standards—”Mel-bun”, then humorously pronounced the state “Victoria” rhyming with “diarrhea”. Not only was the joke local to Australia, it was local to the city in which he was performing.

When Barker told jokes about doing things to live healthier, he included his experiences jogging in the Royal Botanic Gardens. He made himself part of our landscape. And despite the accent, he felt a little more like one of our own.

When I moved from Adelaide back to Melbourne, I changed a line in one of my routines. The beer my Tiki puppet loved to drink went from Coopers (SA local favourite) to VB (VIC local favourite). This sort of attention to local detail should be standard operating procedure for all comedians.

I really liked the fact that Barker didn’t pander much to American stereotypes. Creating laughter through “don’t we all love to hate stupid Americans” humour I am finding boring and unhelpful. He presented himself with dignity while still showing respect to the people of his host country. No one even seemed to miss the hate humour.

I’m looking forward to further visits by Arj Barker. We should make him an honorary Aussie.

http://www.arjbarker.com/

Peace and kindness,

Katherine