Laughter as a radical act
What happens when a group of comedians, anarchists and independent theatre makers decide to put on a festival that is designed to “challenge, stimulate and disturb, and also make you laugh.”
The second Festival of Critical Comedy presented by Awkward Giraffe was held at the Melbourne Unitarian Peace Church last weekend and exceeded the expectations of the organisers, performers and audience members.
Described by the event’s MC Sofie Prints as “an ambitious event well beyond our skill set” what unfolded was a celebration of meta-comedy; comedy about comedy.
What makes you laugh? I never expected such a benign question could lead to an analysis of socio-political structures.
What was radical wasn’t the content of the acts but the way the festival created a community.
I discovered that what makes us laugh is as universal and diverse as what makes us human.
What I found delightfully subversive was the collective resistance to being told by the morality police and the self-appointed arbiters of good taste what is or isn’t allowed to be deemed as funny.
A festival like this is bound to raise the temperature in the room. For the inaugural Festival of Critical Comedy last year, Australian political satirist and comedian Kieran Butler wrote that “critical comedy is designed to educate, make you think, raise hackles, speak truth to power and rail vociferously against the rampant hypocrisy of those who deign to rule over us all.”
This is dangerous territory. Australian comedians have been “cancelled” by festivals for testing the boundaries of content that might be considered offensive, defamatory, sexist, transphobic, racist or misogynist.
Prompted by the inherent question in the festival’s title, laying beneath the surface like a spring-loaded trap, performers and audience members alike were challenged to ponder what is meant by “critical comedy”, and how is it different to other kinds of, let’s say, non-critical, risk-averse, purely-for-entertainment comedy.
What is so tantalising about its vice-like grip is that the definition is as elusive as the “secret of comedy”, as demonstrated so eloquently by the faux “academics from Monash University” performed by David Woods, Jon Haynes and James Daly in the Ridiculusmus Theatre’s brilliant performance of How To Be Funny.
The festival organisers graciously allowed me to take to the stage twice this year.
I delivered the Acknowledgement of Country in a way that was heartfelt and reflected the hypocrisy that Indigenous people feel. As a critique of an often ubiquitous lip-service practice delivered by people who don’t understand, and even worse, don’t care about its significance to culture, it was an appropriately awkward way to open a festival.
The shows I saw made me laugh, sometimes uncomfortably. In Traumedy the Musical Slappy Tee managed to blend hilarious and catchy tunes with her disarmingly sweet, wild-child appearance and stories of having drug addicts as parents and paternal rape.
Tim Cummins’ Freedom from Expression was an interactive “festival within a festival” in which a series of young comedians were instructed to avoid using the words “I” and “we”. The social experiment not only deprived them of the words most used by comedians who have a habit of speaking incessantly about themselves, but also gave the audience permission to shout “you are nothing” every time they broke the rule.
The debate was another highlight for me.
I had the luxury of not being the producer of the event this year and this enabled me to develop a character that I call the Trigger Warning Attendant.
Dressed as an intense, overly-officious, gender-bending German woman lacking a sense of humour, I held up one of 6 signs as silent critique in response to whatever the debaters were saying. Needless to say the B*llsh*t sign was in high rotation.
I’m grateful to the debaters, Sofie Prints, Judy Stutz, Duff Gregfield, Greg Fleet and Paula Darvas for the opportunities to display Toxic Masculinity, Militant Feminism, the “C” word (Covid), Frequent Coarse Language and Gratuitous Violence signs.
The adjudicator role was played again by Dr Joseph Toscano, Australia’s favourite anarchist. He seemed more joyous in his throne this year and less intent on pulling up the debaters on “factual errors”. By default also the host of the debate, Dr Toscano presided over the event and facilitated a true democracy by inviting audience members to allocate scores to each of the debaters.
In a society fragmented by tribalism and distrust of anyone who challenges our beliefs and identity by daring to be an “other”, the weekend was a refreshing, stimulating and fun gathering of people who enjoy laughing, and making others laugh.
My lasting impression of the event is of a celebration of our humanity, delightfully subversive and yet respectful of differences in beliefs, performance styles and senses of humour.
It didn’t so much hold up a mirror to society but rather reflected a wonderful, colourful and entertaining kaleidoscope of why we laugh.
Festival of Critical Comedy by Awkward Giraffe, 16+17 November 2024, Melbourne Unitarian Peace Church, East Melbourne
Photos by Michael Reynolds
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