Skip to main content

Theater Humor

There's two kinds of humor, or rather--senses of humor.

I learned this recently when I found an extremely inappropriate joke funny while it seemed to appall everyone else around me.

Some people like regular humor, and I like theater humor.

Theater humor being wildly offensive and grossly distasteful.  That's the stuff that's guaranteed to make me laugh.  The sort of thing the class clown yells at the teacher from the back of the class, or a joke told about somebody who's only been dead for five minutes, or pretty much any joke told at a roast.

Virtually nothing makes me laugh out loud (despite what all of my Internet conversations say), but that kinda stuff does.

For awhile, I didn't think of it as a separate kind of humor.  I would laugh at a joke, and if other people didn't, I would assume they didn't have a sense of humor at all.  Now I realize they probably did, and I'm just depraved and need mental help--or it's just that I do theater.

Let's face it--most theater people are interested in some morbid shit.  At the very least, we're not easily shocked.  We all swear, we love playing murderers and assholes, and we all know at least one disgusting knock knock joke involving a cow and the Prime Minister of Amsterdam.

(So they're in the boat, and the Prime Minister says--What are those udders for?)

I now realize that I have to pay attention to the crowd I'm in if I'm going to try to be funny or laugh at something I think is funny.  Luckily enough for me, I'm pretty much always with theater people, so I don't anticipate it being a huge issue.

By the way, did you hear the one about the parrot and Woody Harrelson?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A List of People Who Can Go to Hell Now That I Can't Have Elizabeth Warren

So today was a rough day for everybody who isn't a @#$%-ing #$%hole. Let's just start there. If that upsets you, by all means, go straight to hell. This entire rant is going to be exactly what it sounds like. I am mad and I am going to exercise my right to BLOG ABOUT IT LIKE IT'S 1995, SO BUCKLE UP, BUTTERCUP. I really don't even know where to start, so let's just jump right in with the first person who comes to mind. Bloomberg, go to hell.  You really didn't have anything specific to do with today, but you can just go to hell for spending an ungodly amount of money on literally nothing.  I mean, you could have lit millions of dollars on fire and at least warmed the hands of the homeless, but instead, you made tv stations across the country that are already owned by Conservatives rich, so kudos to you and go to hell. Amy Klobuchar, I STUCK UP FOR YOU AMY.  I got into FIGHTS on SOCIAL MEDIA while DEFENDING your sorry, self-interested ass.  You know ...

Theater and the Outbreak

After last week's interview, a representative from a theater that recently experienced the results of opening too soon reached out to speak with me. I want to thank this person for coming forward in the hopes that it'll change some minds about what's safe and what isn't when it comes to the performing arts. Here's the interview: ME:  So this wasn't a full production or-- THEM:  No. It was us trying to do a little something for friends and donors. ME:  Who is 'us?' THEM:  The board of _____. ME:  And how long have you been on the board? THEM:  Three years. ME:  What was this going to be? THEM:  There's a, uh, beautiful park here in town, and we wanted to do an outdoor performance of a Shakespeare as a benefit, because, as you know, theaters are having a hard time right now paying the bills. We checked with the local government and the health department for the state to make sure we were doing everything the way we needed to in order to keep everyon...

My Favorite Podcasts

During this pandemic, I've finally gotten through most of my podcast backlog, and since a bunch of people were sharing their podcast lists last month, I thought I'd join in. I'm not going to give descriptions of each one, but I'll clarify why some are favorites of mine. 10 Things That Scare Me Adulting - Admittedly I don't really like live episodes of podcasts let alone podcasts that are mostly live, but this one is an exception. Against the Rules with Michael Lewis All Songs Considered Articles of Interest Asian Enough Broken Record The Butterfly Effect with Jon Ronson - No new episodes for awhile, but sooo interesting. Cautionary Tales - Absolutely incredible Code Switch Come Through with Rebecca Carroll - Some of the best interviews you'll hear from the past few months The Daily - I go back and forth on this one because the New York Times is so problematic, but very few podcasts does what this one does as well as it does it Dead Eyes - If you're an actor,...