I was absolutely mesmerized by what America consumed during the pandemic and I admittedly consumed it right along with them... Tiger King, Schitts Creek, Ted Lasso, Bo Burnham’s comedy special, Inside...what was the common thread? I think it was laughter.
I don’t often go on and on about television. I usually prefer live experiences to the boob tube, but I admit that I found comfort in watching one, or two...or seven shows in one gulp, particularly over the last two years. When on a global intermission from live, in-person performances, whatchagonna do, right?
Is laughter the best medicine? My mother used to say, “if you aren’t laughing, you aren’t living.” My mother said a lot of crap that wasn’t always true...but this was one I found to be an especially valuable mantra to protect my heart from being encrusted in the mire of woe all around us. The escape provided by this type of storytelling was the respite from reality we all needed.
Mom wasn’t alone. There is a lot of agreement on this one.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.”
– Charlie Chaplin
“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.”
– Victor Borge
“Laughter is a bodily exercise, precious to health.”
– Aristotle
– Abraham Lincoln
“Trouble knocked at the door, but, hearing laughter, hurried away.”
– Benjamin Franklin
Abe, and Ben, and Charlie...they knew what was up! And as we return to a new normal where we are, once again, able to gather around live performing arts, we knew laughter was going to be an important ingredient for our audiences at Kimmel Cultural Campus. There’s something so perfect about using a belly laugh as a beacon of hope and as our siren song for our audiences to return.
Laughter removes boundaries and walls between people and bridges divides and differences. It brings people together and makes us forget our problems. Back in 2017, La Placa Cohen conducted a study that revealed a top motivator for arts participants was fun. It was that simple: people just want to have fun. Do they want to learn things, to be mentally stimulated, and to just experience great art? Yes, they do want those things too, and oftentimes those things aren’t mutually exclusive. But fun was listed head and shoulders above all other motivators and was the unanimous winner across all generations.
Remember that game you’d play at sleepovers? I think it was called, “Ha!”. You’d lay on someone’s belly, and they’d lay on someone else's belly, and so on until you had a snake of belly layers and then the first person would say, “Ha!” and the second person would say “Ha Ha!” and so on...and you’d have peels of laughter snaking like a domino through your sleepover creating that euphoria only giggling sleepovers could create. Well, we are hoping to recreate that euphoria with our fall comedysplosion at the Kimmel Cultural Campus.
Masks and vaccinations are required, so I feel confident saying that the feeling of sitting in a room surrounded by strangers while everyone laughs at the same thing at the same time just feels right for right now. It feels way more right than all of us simultaneously making sourdough starters, alone in our own kitchens. Up first is the one and only John Mulaney, who is only in town for a few more days, but joined us for an extended residency in our Academy of Music. His life is pretty mundane and he’s got nothing at all going on, so I can’t even imagine what he will talk about (see what I did there?).
This week also brought us Mike Birbiglia, who played in our Merriam Theater. It was fun to have comedian pals in two of our venues simultaneously - one with a show at 7 and the other with a show at 8. John Mulaney even surprised Birbiglia audiences by opening for him. Later this week, we have Fortune Feimster joining us with her 2 Sweet 2 Salty Tour, Heather McMahan with her “Farewell Tour” (spoiler alert: I think that’s a punchline and this isn’t actually her final tour). And then Daniel Sloss brings it home for us with his new show HUBRiS.
I have a soft spot for female comedians. Like many of our industries, women in comedy start at a disadvantage. Women comics struggle due to an age-old societal bias: “Women cannot be funny.” Wait, is that right? That can’t be right. Tina, Maya, Amy, Sarah, Ali...say it isn’t so! But even good ol’ Sigmund Freud gave a medical explanation for this in Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious (1905). Siggy claimed that it was impossible for women to be funny because of the way their brains were “structured”. My guess is he delivered this pearl of wisdom while staring at his mom’s boobs.
But after Gilda, Phillis, Lucy, Joan, Carol, Whoopie, Ellen, Wanda… America still hasn’t grown out of this rhetoric. My favorite illustration of this is a 2007 Vanity Fair article titled, “Why Women Can’t Be Funny”. If the title alone enrages you, I don’t recommend reading it.
I glean vicarious pleasure from everything in the theater. When a singer takes the stage, my vocal cords tighten along with their song, my toes struggle to stay in place during dance performances, and while watching standup...well, let’s just say I can barely stay seated. I tried my hat at standup. In fact, somewhere there exist a few home videos my mother took of this spectacle, and I am just so grateful that no one has VCRs anymore. But I can attest that there is nothing more humbling and character-building than taking on a male heckler who won’t let you get to minute five of the tight ten you worked so hard to perfect. But that story is probably for another blog. I am very much looking forward to my heaping helping of belly laughs this fall, but I am especially looking forward to the unapologetic girl bosses who are scheduled to give us all some much needed medicine.
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