The Art Of The Mimic

I went to see 'The Art of Laughter With Jos Houben' at the South Bank Centre today. As my laziness knows no bounds I will, instead of writing it up, quote from http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/capital/about/masterclasses/jos/.
So, Adam Alston, a student present at the Masterclass, describes it thus: It’s difficult to put your finger on precisely what format this wonderful event adopted. I’d venture to propose it was a lecture on the art of slapstick comedy with live performance to inform the content. ‘Inform’ perhaps conjures the wrong essence of the piece: it sounds too constricting or bland. This was anything but. Entertaining, amusing, enlightening and great fun would be terms far more apt. Houben began by analysing, in detail, the human body and its idiosyncrasies. Something common to every performer, spectator and human being is the body: it’s a universal trait. Houben studies how minor adjustments to its structure can produce comic results. An example is the way that the body automatically adjusts to a movement by providing a counter movement to maintain balance. But what happens if the counter movement is eliminated? We fall. And the spectator falls with you. The result: comedy.

I concur. Houben's lecture was brilliant. A lot of what he said was illuminating, and not only for comedy performance. His comments on the body and our obsession with verticality, that is our association of dignity with verticality (of not falling over, of standing up straight, of our use of phrases like 'climbing the social ladder', of building buildings taller the next) was particularly interesting for me in light of my work with people with disabilities. I hope that I will save some headspace in the next few days to think about whether this obsession with uprightness is a core factor in the ubiquity of social prejudice against those whose usual state of being/meeting is sitting down.

Worryingly though, at the same time as thinking this rather preachy piece, I was also acting as an accessory to a rather disturbing case of disability fraud. Donal, my friend and Jos Houben fan, couldn't get a ticket for the event. He looked on the website and it had said it was sold out. However, there were still spaces left for wheelchair users and carers. As no one else had booked them up, Donal, being Donal, strangely took the option of paying to get his leg and arm put in plaster (sum of £40) so that he could pretend to have broken his appendages in a freak skiing accident necessitating the use of a wheelchair (borrowed), thus allowing him into the show. Things went to plan, sort of. You see the electronic ramp at the Southbank Centre didn't work, and so the staff stood face to face with Donal apologetic and guilt ridden, enough to make those of us in the know squirm with similar apology and guilt.... K A R M A..... I personally wanted Donal to stage a miraculous recovery towards the third quarter of Houben's performance, leaving the chair for dead as he tangoed up and down the aisle, but wisely he sat there and kept nervously quiet. Donal enjoyed the talk, he said later, although perhaps not enough to warrant the effort and immorality of the day's rouse.

Finally I thought it would be nice to mention that I saw my friend Tom Ross today and his new girlfriend. She is Italian but as they met in Jordan (where Tom has been living for the past few years), their Lingua Franca is a formal variant of Arabic. Very sweet, if odd.

Oh yes and I am acknowledged for some slight research I did for my friend John Schad's book - Someone called Derrida: An Oxford Mystery. Its my second book acknowledgment, and I am proud and thankful. The book (which I am reading at the moment) is unbelivably good. Non-linear, inventive and worthwhile. Perhaps I'll post on it later.

I go on tour soon for three weeks. I hope it will be fun, fun, fun. Its a headline one, so no excuses.