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How to Do Things with Jokes: Relocating the Political Dimension of Performance Comedy

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How to Do Things with Jokes: Relocating the Political Dimension of Performance Comedy Chow, D.V.B. How to do things with jokes: relocating the political dimension of performance comedy Dick Veloso (Broderick) Chow PhD in Drama by practice-as-research Central School of Speech & Drama University of London Embassy Theatre, Eton Avenue, London NW3 3HY July 2010 1 Chow, D.V.B. I understand the School’s definition of plagiarism and declare that all sources drawn on have been formally acknowledged Signed: Dick Veloso (Broderick) Chow Date: 30 June 2010 2 Chow, D.V.B. Abstract How to do things with jokes: relocating the political dimension of performance comedy This practice-as-research PhD examines the possibility of 'political comedy' in performance and its constitution within the ideological situation of global capitalism. The project is comprised of a written submission, documented practice, and live performance. The practice incorporates elements of stand-up comedy, installation and 'relational art,' and participatory performance. The possibility of a 'radical democratic comedy' includes two elements: (a) a break with ideology, and (b) the creation of an affective, relational space conducive to the formation of an 'attachment.' I argue that satirical, carnivalesque, and transgressive modes of political critique in comic performance operate ideologically, and in spite of appearances and intentions may be bound up in dominant ideology. A political comedy in the present day must therefore somehow break with the dominant logic of a situation. This thesis argues thus that the political dimension of the joke (the basic unit of comedy in performance) is not located in its content, but in the incommensurable gap between set-up and punch-line, which is incompatible with common sense. In practice, the audience must then form an 'attachment' with the break with ideology, which suggests a different form of audience engagement from the pedagogical form that political comedy often takes. After establishing this theoretical framework, this thesis progresses through three phases of experimental practice. First, I expand and interrogate my practice as a stand-up comic. Second, audience-performer relations becomes the primary site of engagement, leading to two projects influenced by participatory performance and Relational Aesthetics. Third, I return to the form of stand-up, coloured by my previous experiments. This project argues for and performs new positions in relation to: (a) the discourse of the politics of comedy and the limits of satire, (b) psychoanalytic readings of humour and the unconscious, (c) formal ways of making and doing comedy as a critical and resistant practice, and (d) current discourses of participation, engagement, and efficacy in performance. I intend to escape the false choice faced by the politically-minded comedian today; to paraphrase Groucho Marx, when given the choice between commenting on the world and changing it, answer 'Yes, please!' 3 Chow, D.V.B. Acknowledgements Thanks to: Central School of Speech and Drama: Professor Andrew Lavender, Dr. Stephen Farrier, Dr. Tony Fisher, Dr. Joel Anderson, Dr. Louise Owen, Dr. Experience Bryon, Dr. Ana Sanchez-Colberg, Adam Parker and the PhD cohort. Thom Glen, Tom Goodliffe, Helen Arney, Nat Luurtsema, Jane Linden. Will Wade, Jessica Hartley, Vicki Spanovangelis, Ben Melchiors, Natasha Freedman. Manchester Metropolitan University Cheshire, The Stand, all the many comedy clubs across the UK I have had the pleasure or displeasure of performing at. Matthew Kerr, for love, homebrew and mutual editing. Richard Jackson, Leanne Cosby, Dan Alicandro, David Gregg, Laura Douglas, Chris Farkouh, Natasha James, Colleen Campbell, Peter Henderson, Clarissa Widya, James Farrell, Matt Cavers, Christopher Murray, Grainne Maguire, Slobodan Milic, Angela Waber, Ayse Tashkiran, Jane Munro, Nick Wood. For AP, and Pazuzu. In loving memory of EFB. For my mother and father, Helen and Martin Chow, and my family. 4 Chow, D.V.B. Table of Contents List of illustrations 7 List of documented content 7 Preface written somewhere between success, and symbolic death 8 Introduction 10 0.0 - Introduction 0.1 - The Philosophical Situation of Comedy 10 0.2 - Theoretical framework 12 0.3 - On practice-as-research 16 0.4 - Self-reflexivity, acts and effects 17 Diagrammatic outline of thesis 20 Chapter 1: Contexts for comedy practice 21 1.0 - Opening moves… on comedy in performance 1.1 - On PaR, comedy, and the market 24 1.2 - Stand-up comedy in Britain 1852-2010 26 1.3 - Case studies: Akira California and Homework for Heroes 31 1.4 - Akira California: a post-apocalyptic stand-up comedy 33 1.5 - Homework for Heroes 33 1.6 - Conclusions: Comedy and resistance 35 Chapter 2: Performance comedy and Ideologiekritik 37 2.0 - The Sense and Nonsense of Comedy and Revolt 2.1 - Enjoy! your comedy: on ideology, cynical reason, and the ‘obscene double’ 39 2.2 - Critique of satirical reason: Carnivalesque practices 44 ‘Tactical Frivolity’ 2.3 - The Big Other is hilarious: Real, Symbolic, and Imaginary in comic discourse 52 RSI and ideology Over-identification Postmodern irony and its discontents 2.4 - Sense to Nonsense and Back Again: On Deleuze and Comedy 70 Curiouser and curiouser!: Difference and Nonsense Case study: Bartleby; the Scrivener; a Deleuzian sense of humour 2.5 - Conclusions: ‘Fighting comedy with comedy…‘ 84 Chapter 3: Attachments and Relational Aesthetics 86 3.0 - The Social Turn: Attachments, Affects, and the Relational 3.1 - Case study: Laughing in a Foreign Language 89 3.2 - Traces and programmes → relational aesthetics and participatory performance 93 A practical paradigm The Aesthetic Rupture Comedy and Relational Aesthetics Traces and programmes 3.3 - Review of Relevant Practices 102 Interactivity and objectivity: Rirkrit Tiravanija Reprogramming the status of the object: Liam Gillick Material interventions into social space: Pierre Huyghe Dialogical Aesthetics 3.4 - Conclusions: is it an ism? 110 Chapter 4: Experimental Practice - Dangerology 113 4.0 - Dangerology: an experimental practice in context 4.1 - The Centre for Dangerology 115 Spaces: smooth and striated Actions: indeterminacy and passivity Events: talking creatures ‘Let’s write a movie in 15 minutes…’ ‘...is freedom’ Consequences: situations and roles 5 Chow, D.V.B. 4.2 - Dangerology: Alsager Arts Centre Gallery, February 2009 125 Curating Knowledge On Comedy and Movement Themes: other selves, perceptions, followings Fifth Floor Drawing 2: Dan Perjovschi Conviviality and spectator activity Enjoy! your libidinal bribe Antagonism (or lack thereof) 4.3 - Conclusions: The space of attachment 138 Chapter 5: Hegemony, ideology, and political articulation 140 5.0 - The Frontier of Exclusion: articulations and antagonisms 5.1 - Critique of Postmodern Reason 141 5.2 - Micropolitical disengagements: production or subtraction? 144 5.3 - A Question of Antagonism 145 5.4 - The Impossibility of Closure 147 5.5 - Kim Noble: Kim Noble Will Die 149 5.6 - Conclusions: Sensus communis or dissensus communis? Yes, please! 153 Chapter 6: Experimental Practice - Easy, Tiger! 155 6.0 - Easy, Tiger! (a) and (b): analysis of practice-as-research 6.1 - Alliances, universalities, and particulars 157 6.2 - Easy, Tiger! (a): a return to performance 159 ‘I always felt like I was watching’ (Visitor, 2 May 2009) Conclusions 6.3 - Easy, Tiger! (b): a return to comic performance 163 Audience; and the group ‘Act?’ or acting out? ‘I would prefer not to…’ 1) Antagonism or exclusion 2) The break with ideology 3) Attachments 4) Danger and safety Conclusions: Negotiation(s) 6.4 - How to do things with jokes: live submission (5 July 2010) 180 6.5 - Conclusions: Political articulations in the moment of performance 181 Conclusion: The political dimension of performance comedy 183 7.0 - Doing things with jokes 7.1 - Contributions to new knowledge 184 7.2 - Summary of chapters 185 7.3 - Envoi 187 Works Cited 190 6 Chow, D.V.B. List of Illustrations Fig. 1 - Diagrammatic Outline of Thesis 20 Fig. 2 - I’m the most popular boy in the room Fig. 3 - I’m the most… (post-defacement) Fig. 4 - Fifth Floor drawing 2 (Dan Perjovschi) List of Documented Content Disc 1: Stand-up 1. About 2. Akira California: a post apocalyptic stand-up comedy View Clip About 3. Homework for Heroes View Clip About 4. Circuit Disc 2: Dangerology 1. The Centre for Dangerology: September 2008 View slideshow of images 2. Dangerology: Alsager Arts Centre Gallery, February 2009 View slideshow of images Research Seminar Event (edit) Research Seminar Event (full) About Curating Knowledge (by Jane Linden, MMU Cheshire) Disc 3: Easy, Tiger! 1. Easy, Tiger! (a): one-to-one performance View edited version 2. Easy, Tiger! (b): public scratch performance View film (full) 3. Easy, Tiger! (b): The Festival Of, September 2009 View edit Clips election book bartleby 7 Chow, D.V.B. PREFACE Written somewhere between success and (symbolic) death... With any piece of writing, it is understood that the reader may come across these words at any point, though of course, the burial of PhD theses in the bowels of university libraries perhaps suggest less a process of 'stumbling across' than 'treasure hunt,’ but I myself, both the writer and the main object of enquiry of this thesis, set these words down at a very specific point in time. It is 10:30 in the morning, on the 24th of June 2010, and I am quietly congratulating myself for snagging a corner desk in Humanities 2 of the British Library. It is exactly one week before I submit the written portion of my PhD thesis, along with documentation of a series of experiments in practice. But the reader (and here, if I were to be less coy, I might say examiner), will most likely be laying their eyes upon these words after seeing a performance also entitled How to do things with jokes, which is part of my PhD submission. While the written thesis and documentation unfold in a sort of narrative, the first introduction to my work, for some readers, is thus an instance of practice that is, to an extent, cumulative.
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