William Shakespeare once said: “The whole world is a stage, and we are merely players”. This could not be truer today as we as living things radiate energy through our thoughts and feelings playing character comedians and actors, be it on formal stages, or as parents, members of the community, influencers. Even in our sleep as our body performs biological functions that keep us alive and is performing according to our emotional and psychological make up.
Comedy is not just entertainment but an information distribution channel and powerful one at that as well as art form that facilitates collective healing. If you can laugh, you are over it and have achieved neutrality. Trauma is not what happened to you, instead, it is the story that one keeps saying to oneself to survive. That is exactly where comedy helps rewrite scripts that helps us not only survive but, thrive: bust prejudices, challenge stereotypes, widen horizons and choice of options.
Comedy is a wonderful light-hearted form of storytelling, we use it to reframe past experiences so that our subjects can let go of those limiting beliefs that hold them back in life. We may use as setup a real-life situation that we observed (observational comedy is widely used), and switch on inner court fool, jester, and write the ending, the punchline, so that it is provocative, amusing, and thought-provoking. Unexpected in any case because that is what contributes laughs. Historically court jesters were the closest trusted advisers to kings as they could communicate on another level and tell the truth.
Challenges to any artform today include cancel culture which is symptom of herd like thinking (or expecting not to think but be told what to think), cultural differences, collective lowered mood enhanced by constant feeds of fear and technological advancements. It is as if the society tells “Be yourself, Be authentic. Not like that.” That is far from the freedom of thought and expression. One of my favourite artists and creatives, Nina Simone said that it is the role of an artist to depict the times in which we live. Artist to be free has to have a certain freedom to express and think for themselves. Comedians generally come with very high IQ and critical thinking and do their research well to the minute layers. For one joke, one may spend a week reading to be factually unchallenged on certain clauses.
There is a rise in activism and socially conscious sets that challenge norms. Comedy activists walk the tight rope, a fine line between thought-provoking and offensive material.
People often say they listen to the news then go to the comedy show to find out what the truth behind the news. Good performing artists present pros and cons in their comedic writing so much so that sometimes difficult to gauge what the artists’ own view is due to their subtle use of sarcasm, exaggeration, reverse psychology at play, use of dark humour, deadpan delivery, incongruence, rule of three, afterthought joke models and fast paced switch in creating new jokes.
Diversity and Inclusion is a big area and one of the more positive trends as comedians from marginalised groups are stepping into the spotlight, bringing more diverse viewpoints reshaping comedy landscape and representing our society more authentically. I have turned my experiences of motherhood, corporate career, dance hobby and cultural identity as Eastern European into comedy gold. Key performance indicators (KPIs) seem to still be widely set by white middle-class, middle-aged public school boys and ocassionally a gig feels like lads telling the jokes to other lads. Less than 20% in this industry are women (five men and one woman and if she is of ethnic minority to tick more boxes for promoter compared to around half of the population being women and over a third of diverse ethnicity, it seems we can still do better. In our club we are very conscious of the stats nationally and internationally, we pay attention to population’s diminishing mental health rise in all kinds of neurological quirks, who may need support and we challenge skilfully some of the status quo pairing up with the national health service, Governmental advisory bodies and independent consultants who raise issues in the industry. Over 8 years, having booked over 3,000 artists from across the world, I notice that women do not come forward as much as men. To have a balanced line-up I literally have to build a woman up behind the scenes, persuade her that she is good enough, while men often enlarge their set of skills. This trend is totally in line with corporate roles. men see a role, can do 50%, they apply without hesitating. Women, on the other hand may have 80% yet focus on 20% they lack.
Creating content using tech and multimedia is another positive trend and let’s balance old school joke mind maps for jokes anything from racial identity, existential crisis, relationship dynamics, parenting in modern age, offering humour that speaks across cultures and language barriers. The business case to have a constant stream of diversity like in the business world, is in that it enlarges creativity, capabilities, makes experiences more enriched. Laughter has abundant power as art form to help transcend differences, bring closer together and heal. Finally the trend is more story telling and it is fantastic as we tell stories on stage, we help each other rewrite our own individual and collective scripts for the better.