Comedians can tell truths others can’t
I heard something intriguing in a comedian’s podcast and it wasn’t what you might think. The host was interviewing a comedian and talking about her latest act. It was all about some very dark and harrowing things that had happened to her. She’d managed to create a comedy act that enabled her to talk about those things and she explained how she’d done it and the structure of her act.
Although not as extreme, I’ve seen and heard comedians talk about some very difficult subjects. This isn’t something new; famously, court jesters could speak truth to power and not be executed for it. The court jester appears in a modern form too. I’ve seen comedians at corporate events say some things that are very close to the bone and get away with it.
This poses the question: how do comedians do it?
Trust and safety
On the podcast, the ‘harrowing’ comedian explained how she made the audience feel safe at the start of her act. The audience knew the subject matter would be difficult, but they had to trust her as their guide. She talked about how she did that: the jokes she told, her use of language, how she interacted with the audience, and so on. Only once the audience were in a position where they felt safe and they trusted her did she start on her more difficult journey.
The idea of safety also applies to the court jester and his or her modern counterparts. The jester will never be king, so they’re not a threat to the established order. In fact, the king is paying the jester, and of course, this payment could end at any time. Payments set limits on how far you can go, so the court jester knows to be concerned with audience safety too.
We can gain some insight into why audience safety is important through some of the theories of comedy.
Theories of comedy: benign violation
There’s very active research into what comedy is and why it appeals to us. Researchers have developed a multitude of theories that explain why we find different types of jokes funny, but there’s no accepted grand unified theory.
The comedy theory that’s most applicable to us here is Benign Violation theory. This theory says we find things funny that violate our expectations of reality in some way but only if they don’t feel threatening to us. Threatening can mean different things at different times, but it also gets to expectation. If I go to a stage play about a difficult subject, I might expect the play to make me cry for the characters. If I go to a comedy show, I want to laugh, not cry with empathy. In comedy, I have to feel safe with the comedian, meaning they’re not going to take me to bad emotional places.
Using this theory, we can understand how a comedian can structure an act about a time they were mugged. Let’s say there were some absurdities about the robbery itself. If the comedian talks about how awful they felt during and after the robbery and how it affected them, this is all very serious and not funny; the audience will empathize but not laugh, so it isn’t benign; the audience isn’t safe emotionally. The comedian has to remove the sting somehow which they could do by letting everyone know they were OK after the robbery. Once the audience knows it’s safe, the comedian can proceed and focus on the absurdities (AKA violations).
If you want to see an extraordinary example of this for real, see Tig Notaro’s act about her breast cancer and double mastectomy. She places the audience in a position of safety and only then talks about what happened. She focuses on some absurdities of her experience and real life and not on the harrowing side of it, so again the audience feels safe (benign) while she talks about difficult things (violation). It’s OK to laugh, because she’s OK with it and she’s laughing with us.
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Rule breaking: unsafe audiences
This brings us to an interesting aspect of audience safety, audience interaction.
I’ve seen comedians pick on people in the front rows and make fun of them. For example, make fun of their occupation or partner or where they’re from etc. This goes to another theory of comedy, superiority theory, that says we laugh at the misfortune of others. If you’re not the person the comedian is picking on, it can be very funny, but if you are, it can be very threatening.
Think for a minute how the audience feels while the comedian is looking for a new target. There’s fear because some of the humor can cut deeply. Audiences know this and can be very wary. I’ve been to comedy acts where no one wants to sit near the stage and no one will volunteer anything to the comedian. The audience don’t feel safe doing so.
Years ago, I went to see Eddie Izzard. He started his act asking the audience questions. No one answered. At the time, comedians were known to pick on audience members, so the audience didn’t feel safe. When finally someone did answer, he made fun of their home town. Later on in his act, Eddie Izzard commented about the audience’s English reserve and not interacting, but I think he was wrong and it was something else; they didn’t feel safe engaging with him because they didn’t want to be a target.
More recently, I was at a corporate event and there was a stand-up comedian. She said some very funny things about one of the c-level execs, it was cutting because it was true. When she asked for audience interaction, she got none because no-one wanted to be her next target.
Expectations and safety
There’s something that’s kind of obvious but hidden and that’s audience expectations and safety. If you go to see a late-night comedian after the pubs have shut, you might expect an expletive ridden show with all kinds of adult humor, and that’s OK because you know what it is. On the other hand, you have very different expectations for a comedian performing in front of 10-year-old children. Where the safety boundaries are varies depending on the audience.
In the case of my ‘harrowing’ comedian, she made it very clear in her show’s publicity material that her show contained very difficult material. On the Tig Notaro show I saw on TV, the channel made it clear it was an adult show covering difficult themes. In my view, this is responsible and also helps the audience to feel safe.
What all this means
As a presenter, if you want the audience to interact with you, they have to trust you. Don’t demean people who volunteer, it discourages everyone else. I suggest positivity. Let’s say an audience member tells you they come from a very run down town. You could riff on crime in that town, or you could tell a benign story about the town like losing your car in a huge parking lot there. Rewarding people for engaging with you encourages more engagement.
Audiences have to feel safe with you if you’re going to push any kind of boundary, and this is especially true if any of your material is difficult. You have to let your audience know that you’re OK and they’re OK, and they’ll be OK if they go on a journey with you; you’re going to make them laugh, not cry.
Finally, you can speak truth to power through humor, but you need to know what you're doing and what the limits are.
