Funnyman Stagebill

DIRECTOR’S Notes They say dying is easy and comedy is hard. Well having spent the better part of my life working in the theater, I can attest that statement is true. With drama, you can’t always register how the moment to moment action of the play resonates with an audience. Everyone takes their own journey and hears different things in the play. It’s ephemeral. But with comedy, if there’s Matt Pfeiffer not a laugh, you feel like you failed. If the audience doesn’t walk out crying tears of laughter, you failed. It is indeed a do or die enterprise. And worse, even if you do it exceedingly well, audiences often take for granted just how hard it is to pull off. And yet real students of the form, real lovers of comedy, know just how much skill and wisdom goes into making someone laugh. Fortunately for us, Bruce Graham is one of those people.

Funnyman is Bruce’s exploration of the conundrum, what happens if you can make the world laugh, but can’t bring joy into your own life. There is a cost to the craftsmen who makes the joke. Some say that comics are some of the saddest people you’ll ever meet. Great playwrights have explored this dynamic for ages. But I think Shakespeare observed it best, in is play Twelfth Night.

Here’s Viola talking about Feste the fool: This fellow is wise enough to play the fool; And to do that well craves a kind of wit: He must observe their mood on whom he jests, The quality of persons, and the time, And, like the haggard, cheque at every feather That comes before his eye.This is a practise As full of labour as a wise man’s art.

Thanks so much for being here.