Humor Performance and Expectations
Understanding Performance and Expectations Between Those Producing Humor and Their Audiences
As we move from making jokes or wise cracks to telling funny stories or longer, involved jokes, we must consider performance.
Humor requires a kind of contract of common expectations between the speaker and listener, especially in more formal performance environments such as a comedic show or play. Performers act in the front region as the principal speakers while the audience assumes a position mainly in the back region as the listeners. To support the performance, the audience must laugh, applaud, remain silent, and cheer or boo to demonstrate their constant involvement in the show. In the case of stand-up comedy, the comedians and audience are free to cross the lines of the front and back regions.
The point of determining a participation framework is to establish expectations on the part of the performers and listeners or audience: the audience expects the comedians to entertain them. At the same time comedians are seeking to establish roles, they are also establishing mood or genre.
Another aspect of the contract between comedic performer and audience is the performer promises not to offend the audience or make the humor so complicated that the audience cannot understand it.
George Carlin's live performances demonstrate an excellent example of offending the audience for a specific purpose. He begins his shows with a non-stop string of especially rude and vulgar jokes to sort out the people that really do not want to attend. In the first 15 minutes, many members of the audience boo him and leave. When people are no longer walking out, he eases up on the vulgarity of his jokes and begins the show for real, having established the tone of the show and a contract between himself and the audience.
The second half of this contract has to do with the complexity of the jokes. For example, A Prairie Home Companion does a joke show every year that involves non-stop one liners, knock-knock jokes, silly stories and songs and features comedians as guests. During this show, members of the audience must pay attention to every word and line, so they do not miss the humor or punch lines. In some cases, members may not get the jokes.
This is bound to happen, but the performers must make sure that their jokes are not so complicated and fast that the audience cannot understand the jokes or keep up. Such infelicitous outcomes breech the contract between performer and audience as the audience loses interest or worse, feels that their intelligence is belittled and essentially loses face.
