The Power of the Carnival Satirist: Taking Laughter Seriously David Charles Rollins College Spontaneous theatre forms, such as street theatre, short-form improvisation, and community-based performances, unmistakably share a common and pervasive audience response: laughter. As Jerry Palmer observes in Taking Humour Seriously, humor and laughter are key elements of most human communication to some degree. “[L]isten to any conversation and it is full of jokes, puns, humourous allusions, [and] word play for the sake of it,” he writes (1). Theatrical enterprises undoubtedly refl ect and magnify this all-too-human fondness for wit and whimsy, and yet many do not engage in the pursuit of laughter merely “for the sake of it.” Improvisational performance practices, in particular, historically heighten and exploit this innate communicative tendency to a serious end. Hidden beneath the frequently overt comedic façade often lurks a more politicized agenda predicated on a particular form of laughter—that of the carnival satirist. Russian literary theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin, explicates the notion of this playful clown fi gure operating in the highly participatory world of the carnival, a world that “brings together, unifi es, weds, and combines the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignifi cant, the wise with the stupid” (Problems 123). The carnivalesque, as a performance site and mode, offers a highly dialogic realm with its tireless satiric employment and redeployment of the symbols of the oppressor and oppressed alike. In Bakhtin’s paradigmatic carnival- inspired playground, messiness supplants order, playful laughter combats dogmatic seriousness, and spontaneous surprise undermines authoritative control. Under this playful banner of the carnivalesque, laughter truly performs serious work. Improvisational theatre shares much with this spirit of the carnivalesque, and subsequently, provides a rich site of investigation into the purpose and power of laughter and comedy in the theatrical realm. The malleable and fl uid nature of 11 12 David Charles Members of Orlando’s SAK onstage. Broadly drawn characters suggested by simple costume pieces or masks serve as a staple ingredient for most spontaneous improv traditions. The simplicity of production elements allows for malleable transformations that accentuate satiric and creative potentials alike. SAK photos by Denna Eramo. The Power of the Carnival Satirist 13 spontaneous theatre forms—forms that are equally marked by a heightened level of participant inclusiveness and off-the-cuff whimsy aptly refl ect the equalizing carnival spirit that so enthralled Bakhtin. However, an examination of these performance sites not only reveals the breadth and scope of light-hearted improvisational laughter, but also vividly outlines the various political agendas, pitfalls, and serious power of this fundamental form of human communication. A consideration of spontaneous theatrical modes sheds light on improvisation’s affi nity with the carnival spirit and uncovers these varied political agendas and potencies as they reveal themselves in and through the laughter of the crowd. Whether in the service of institutional “comedy warehouses,” such as Second City and ComedySportz,1 or community- centered practices, such as Playback Theatre and Augusto Boal’s Legislative Theatre, artfully elicited laughter emerges as a powerful theatrical and political tool. In fact, such laughter reveals itself as a double-edged tool with the innate ability to both reify preexisting norms and power structures, and question dominant monologic conserves and grand narratives. How this performative laughter fi nds expression, in what ways it is manipulated in the theatrical endeavor, and where one may witness this carnivalesque spirit in its most potent staged applications, serve as this discussion’s primary investigative goals. Bernard Sahlins, longtime owner/operator of North America’s signature satiric showcase, comments on the nature of laughter in his speech celebrating the 40th anniversary of Second City, an institution Gilda Radner described as a “university for comedy” (Sweet 363). Sahlins remarks, The fact is, man is the only animal that laughs, and comedy’s major role is to evoke the laughter that celebrates our unity as mortal creatures […] when we as a community laugh at the same thing, it’s a very special moment. It’s the realization of a desperate hope: the hope that we are enough like one another to sense one another and to be able to live together. (Sahlins 105-6) Sahlins points to a serious political power contained in the laughter of an audience. He contends that laughter it is not merely a pleasant byproduct of entertaining distraction. Within the carnivalesque spirit of irreverence lies a hidden strength. “Ironic truths are great levelers. Laughter makes equals of kings and commoners. That is why we [Second City] are the theatre without heroes. Laughter defl ates the high and mighty and gives structure to our world” (119). Sahlin’s battle cry represents an increasingly common view of improvisational theatre’s interconnectedness with comedic performance (and the apparent accompanying political agenda of equality). In fact, in the modern period, improvisation and comedy have almost become interchangeable terms in entertainment circles, as Jonathan Fox, founder of Playback Theatre, summarizes: “Improvisation, or ‘improv’ as it is often termed, means funny, means cabaret, means zany audience suggestions” (Acts 73). While Fox clearly bemoans this genre elision, in certain situations this confl ation is not unwarranted or unsolicited. Richard Chudnow, founder of the mainstream improv franchise ComedySportz, deliberately takes advantage of and reifi es this perception. His 14 David Charles manual’s succinct defi nition emphasizes the value of laughter: “ComedySportz is a sport. It is a competition for laughs” (2). In this improvisational mode, scenes unfl inchingly pursue the punch line in a performance style Chudnow characterizes by the neologism comprovisation. “[W]hat I like to think that is,” he elaborates, “is a combination of comedy styles and methods of getting an audience to laugh and that includes comic acting, it includes improv, it includes mime, it includes acting, burlesque, slapstick—whatever you have to do” (quoted in Seham 87). Laughter, for Chudnow, is the ultimate and highly marketable goal of performance. Though Sahlins points to a more radical end—namely the communal connectedness of the assembled audience—when economic determinants dominate the performance ethos, laughter may function as an essentially conservative force bolstering the status quo. As Sahlins notes above, it can serve to unite a community as they share laughter expressing recognition or familiarity; on the other hand, it can also serve to marginalize or oppress the objects of the “joke,” thereby reinforcing negative and potentially harmful stereotypes, prejudices, or bigotries. When art seeks to appeal to a mass mentality, as an economic imperative would dictate, it typically recreates a mass sensibility: subsequently, an all-too-apparent white middle- class heterosexual male drive typically plagues North American improv. Seham observes this dangerous tendency in the quick-fire ComedySportz tradition of play where audience expectations often invite less-than provocative portrayals of less privileged positionalities. Members of Tucson Playback Theatre, “Speed and spontaneity are often used as a a performance mode that seeks honest intimacy over mass appeal. rationale for stereotypes,” she writes. “More often than not, spectators applaud scenes in which their suggestions produce the expected jokes and relationships rather than original or innovative ones” (102).2 Subsequently, “laugh-factories” often perpetuate the marginalization of minority performers whose best potentials for success seem to exist in the domain of the self-effacing cliché or caricature. Laughter, in such cases, while undoubtedly political in nature, is anything but radical in its intent. While the carnival satirist’s tools are clearly employed, they are not aimed sharply or exploited to their full political potential: rather than questioning existing systems of power and privilege, satiric laughter here often plays into dominant role assumptions. Chudnow’s franchise is by no means alone in adopting this “laugh at all costs” approach to improv,3 but this stance does not refl ect the vast promise or depth of improvisation’s relationship to humor, nor does it adequately summarize the movement’s political might. Other practitioners perceive a more overtly transgressive political potential, seeing laughter as a tool for exposing and questioning rather than as an alluring economic end in itself. Bakhtin places considerable value on the freeing strain of this phenomenon, noting, “[e]verything that is truly great must include The Power of the Carnival Satirist 15 an element of laughter. Otherwise it becomes threatening, terrible, or pompous; in any case, it is limited. Laughter lifts the barrier and clears the path” (“Notes” 135). Laughter, for Bakhtin, is capable of disbanding preconceptions and opening the way to new possibilities. The instrument of this power is often Bakhtin’s Members of FourPlay: The (Improvised) Musical, a two-act long-form structure, aforementioned clown performer—the set the stage for the audience-inspired comedic mayhem prosaic dialogizer—who sounds to follow. High energy, irreverent attitudes and parodic forth “on the stages