Despite the rise and rise of complex, richly engaged comedy, people in other artforms still don’t have any respect for it. For the last few years I’ve been interested—in a rather inchoate way—in how comedy and contemporary classical music might interact, in particular whether the forms and structures of comedy provide an interesting and novel analogy for the structuring of a piece of music, or whether music-theatre can learn from comedy performance practices. I’d be interested, for example, if the tension inherent in a Stewart Lee performance, and the sophisticated use of reference and callbacks, could provide an emotional flavour that could be delivered in a musical way, or whether the emotional trajectory of Daniel Kitson’s storytelling performances could give us an idea of how to hold an audience for an extended period of time.
Very few people take this seriously. When someone raised a point like this with Larry Goves at a tutorial last summer, the response was incomprehending. What could the mere stimulus-response of joke-laugh have to do with a sophisticated artform such as composing a string quartet? Similarly, at a meeting the other day, the idea that a contemporary music group might put on a joint event with a comedy group was treated rather distastefully—”I don’t know if we want to be associated with that sort of thing”, whereas collaborations with poetry and art groups were greeted with enthusiasm.
I don’t want to suggest that all comedy is deep and profound—there is a big place for “summat as meks yer ears laff”. But, when some people in contemporary comedy are making a rich and distinctive contribution to new ways of taking an audience on an emotional trajectory, it is a pity that this is ignored by other artforms.