ONE NIGHT ONLY! (Essay)

 

ONE NIGHT ONLY!

Audience Attention as Co-Creation in Stand-Up Comedy

 

Imagine, if you will, a Buddhist Mandala sand sculpture. An austere and silent group of Buddhist monks spend weeks, delicately arranging colored sand, of seemingly thousands of bright and impossibly miniscule hues and living tones. All done in miraculously small detail, for a hundred gods and goddesses, deities and religious heroes, in amazingly tiny portraiture. All in a circle over 10 feet in circumference, every inch patiently and devoutly crafted. All the brightest colors of the visible rainbow, with infinitesimally small arrangements you never thought possible for mere human hands to create. Then, when it's finished, in a visual and chromatic symphony to surpass some of the greatest sunsets you may have ever seen in your entire life, the monks arrive again, gather and destroy this unfathomable work of art. All the formerly meticulously placed individual grains of sand now swept en masse into a solemn bowl and ceremoniously, under holy prayer, now dispersed into a river, so the blessings can spread to the rest of the world. This art imparts a lesson, that even things of great beauty and talent will eventually change shape. Experience requires you to be present, because nothing lasts forever. The mandala, and lived experiences as a whole, is something that can only be lived.

Now imagine that those monks also had to remember to wish someone a happy birthday while they were doing it. And the temple had a two-drink minimum, which leads one guy to "drink 7 cause it's cheaper that way." And there's a heckler who thought that he should "help" the monks do their job. Plus, there's the bachelorette party that's mad that the monks aren't "making the sculpture for her."

This is a rough comparison – to me, at least – for the general feeling of performing stand-up comedy. Say whatever you want about comedy, but I believe one fact of the matter is that it is an art form that only exists as long as it is being performed, and ceases to exist once the performance is finished. Even other tangentially related forms of public performance (theater, for instance) may be made better by the presence of an audience – the performers may draw energy or not from a warm or cold audience – but a play given to an empty room will still contain the same dialogue as in front of a packed house. Plus, the script still survives as a script. A play may be served or improved by live performance, but it certainly can't be said to not-exist, even if it is never performed for an audience. It's still lives in script form.

Whereas even if a comic may have an ideal set – either written or in their head, with salient points they might hope to deliver – the show is far more co-created with the audience, at least when compared to every other art form. There is far more (let's call it) pivoting, and therefore creation, that one might be forced to do at showtime. Creation that very likely was not planned for, nor will ever happen again. Surely, thinking on one's feet is appreciated in a theater actor, but that's only in the case of something going wrong, in order to bring the show back to where it needs to be. Comedy has the always latent potential to veer into some totally undiscovered and exciting country for both the performer and the audience.

This is even more evident if you compare stand-up comedy to any of the more (we might say) static art forms, such as paintings, books, and movies. Even attending a movie with a screaming baby nearby does not change the foundational celluloid that is being projected onto the screen. And of course, that's not to say that those art forms can't have a different meaning over time – growing old with a work of art in your life that means a lot to you, and grows with you, is one of life's miracles – but these things do not physically change between viewings. How you interpret or view art may change as you age, but that is not that same as the art itself changing. To extend the analogy, it would be as if you opened a book from the library, and a cascade of penis straws from a bachelorette party kept falling out the whole time while you were reading. It'd certainly change how the work affected you, to say the least.

For the Work of Art known as a comedy show – like the sand sculpture – is created communally in the empty between-space of the artist and the audience in the seats. To reiterate and make clear: the audience is not the sand, they are fellow monks; but without them, The Show does not exist. The room always exists. The stage and chairs exist. And the audience members may be said to exist, as well as the performer – they all have lives outside of this space, of course. But the show does not exist whatsoever in a complete freestanding form, away from any of the components in proximity. The Show does not exist, it is only Maintained Until It Isn't. If any human part of the equation stops giving it their full attention, it struggles, and might wither and die. Or, at the very least, certainly not reach the heights of its potential.

Of course the final point is whether it's a foregone conclusion to desire to pursue that maximum potential, and I submit that it is. Firstly, if you pay the ticket for a comedy show, and then don't do your part by paying attention, you are throwing away your own money. You are literally giving yourself a worse night. By not doing your part to support this vocabulary and auditory alchemy, you are directly affecting how good of a time you will have. There is an amazing amount of creative agency at hand, comparatively speaking, as a comedy audience member. To not pursue that to the best of your ability is economically counterintuitive, so say the least. There are several (previously mentioned) public entertainment art forms that can be idly attended, without affecting the end product. Comedy is not one of them.

Secondly, due to that enormous amount of agency, you are also getting something out of it. This is not only to help the comic get a better response from their artistic expression – you're not just helping the person on stage – but it's also a feedback loop that is returned back to you. This is obviously not to say that being an audience member for a comedy show is work. Speaking from experience, I can tell you that the performer would also like to keep this whole endeavor as far as away from the concept of "Real Work" as possible, as well. But it can definitely be thought of as a serotonin reward center. The more you put in, the more you are likely to receive. A helpful analogy would be if you were to compare it to going dancing; it's fun and lovely, but one must also be ready to dance. And there are obviously different kinds of dancing – waltzes, slam dancing, mosh pits, polka steps, and rave humping – but regardless of what style you might want to sign up for on any particular night, one thing for sure is that it's certainly no place for lethargy. Just think of comedy as Brain Dancing. I'm not exactly sure which types of comedy align with which types of dancing I just listed, but I think the analogy still holds well enough to make my point clear.

Of course, I'd be a fool and a tyrant to suggest going to comedy shows without drinking, or to even ask performers to be sober. And, admittedly, I have had shows (for instance) where I was asked to congratulate someone's birthday, and the rest of the show ended up going very well, especially since now I had secured an immediate simpatico with someone in the audience – a new friend I was on a first name basis with – to commiserate with if things went strange, or express pride together if something killed. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that The Unplanned Weirdness is a large reason that comedy continually strikes me as so beautiful. But I think there is something to be said to remember the important distinction that exists between one thing being a challenge and another thing being an intrusion. Buddhist monks obviously don't make sand sculptures because they're easy, but that's still not a green light invitation to try your best to intentionally make their job impossible. Your help and concentration as audience is genuinely and deeply appreciated, but it's important to remember that – metaphorically speaking – we're still dealing with sand. This whole endeavor can still be surprisingly delicate. But when it's done well, it barely even feels like work – for all the parties involved. Which obviously largely feeds into why it's probably the best job I've ever had.