Claire Woolner has the definitive answer

What is comedy? Wow, what a question. A question everyone’s asking. In this article, I will answer this question correctly.

Here we go. What? is? comedy? That’s easy – it’s anything funny.

After that, though, it gets tricky. Because what you find funny, I may not and then how do we know its comedy? Not to mention, do we actually even know what we think is funny? Or are we conditioned to learn to like what the media (or powers that be) want us to like so that we will all say ha-ha and buy whatever they're selling?

I have a lot of friends with babies and here's what I notice about their babies and comedy. Babies absolutely lose their shit with repetition and build. It doesn't have to make sense, it just has to take them by surprise. Surprise that you, the adult, keep making the same stupid face, pretend to stop and then do it again.

In ‘professional’ comedy, we see the ‘rule of threes’ the third time gets the slight change and the laugh. In long form improv, we find the ‘game’ and then keep repeating that game as it builds. Lucille Ball continues to shove chocolates into her mouth whilst the conveyor belt picks up speed, we laugh harder and harder.

I’m not an expert on comedy at all, and am certainly unqualified to write about it, let alone name what comedy is. But to me, that very thing is funny. It tickles me. Me writing about what comedy is when I am, most likely, unqualified to do so. Is that funny to you? But then again, who gets to say who is qualified and who isn't? About heart surgery maybe, sure, but comedy?

And this brings me to really what I find funny. As well as the correct answer for what comedy is. And why my absurdist comedy clown show is unbelievably uproariously funny (and beautiful).

For me, comedy just comes down to doing the wrong thing. Maybe it’s clown, maybe it's absurdist, maybe it’s surrealist theatre-–  I don’t know (or care). I just know, the shit that gets the most laughs is always the wrong thing. John Gilkey (Cirque du Soleil clown and my clown mentor ew, sorry for calling you that, Gilkey), is the first person who really got this into my pinhead. And this bearded juggler genius was right. It is when we witness the comic, be it an improviser, stand-up or clown, deal with something that wasn’t ‘supposed’ to happen, that the room usually laughs the hardest.

This also, I guess, assumes that laughter is a barometer of comedy, but I think in live theatre, it’s safe to make that assumption. Gilkey’s note to me to ‘do the wrong thing’ broke open a world of funny deeper than anything I had witnessed before.

So what is the wrong thing? Is it breaking the rhythm? Is that why kids laugh when you pause peek-a-boo and look away and then do it again? Do we laugh at stand-ups because they say what we aren’t 'supposed' to say? And at clowns because they show a depth of emotion that isn’t generally accepted in everyday life?

I think it's being caught off-guard –  it’s why a fart is consistently funny to me as it’s always a surprise and we would rather it not happen yet, it's sort of joyful when it does.

I recently taught a clown class where we looked at visual and performance artists to guide us in creating comedic bits, my thesis being that trying to be funny isn’t funny, but trying to be true often is.

We looked at the work of Pipilotti Rist and Bas Jan Ader –  beautiful pieces that are so honest in their intention that I personally can’t help but laugh; a deep, resonant laugh within my belly.

This is the approach I took when building the show I have brought to Edinburgh. How to be as honest as possible, even in the absurd and surreal. Obviously, I love a big laugh and getting the whole room going, but even better is the kind of laughter that feels like maybe you shouldn't be laughing but you can't help it. The kind of laugh when you get in trouble in class and the teacher is telling you to stop, which only makes you just laugh harder and harder.

A clown friend once said to me, ‘Don’t worry, Claire, no one thinks you’re a comedian’. And an actor friend once said to me ‘Claire, you are truly a comedienne’ Who’s right and who’s wrong? The point is that you get to decide. And that’s funny.

But then again, I’m just an idiotic American interested in exploring the human psyche, societal expectations and turning awkwardness into entertainment.

• Claire Woolner is an LA-based absurdist comedian performing her award-winning show A Retrospection at PBH’s Free Fringe Banshee Labyrinth Chamber Room at 11pm until August 27 (not 15).

Published: 9 Aug 2023