Blog
Comedy
Comedy entered my performances in 2007 with the debut of Goddess of Roses. Not that I’d never been funny, in the text itself or in the spontaneous breaks from it. But an unpremeditated freedom took hold of me–can freedom ever be premeditated?–that night, and during those breaks many things that I said and did caused the audience to laugh. My unconscious integration of comedy surprised me, and now it just happens during a performance. More play. More engagement with the audience, in which I can tease them or ask them to help me with something or further personalize or conceptualize an idea or a story in the text.
I think that comedy balances any elements of the seductive and ethereal actress (which I write about in the October 23 post, Actress) and helps to bring her down to earth.
I struggle with comedy in my art. I tend to look at most things in life through the lens of humor, but have been criticized for letting humor overshadow a piece. I realize comedy can be very simplistic, and I definitely do not want to come off as a one-liner. However, if someone is laughing, they must be engaged with what you are creating. I can’t help but relate this idea of comedy and humor to what you were saying in a more recent post about R. Crumb – can’t comedy, humor, levity and laughter be enough?
Laughter seems like one of the most important parts of freedom in art. Freedom really isn’t examined very often in art, so it seems extra-important to figure out how to integrate the two.