Thanks to Hannah Gadsby, we are now familiar with some of the risks of comedy – the ways in which the obligation to get a laugh necessitates the smoothing out or simplification of stories, often at personal cost. She showed how comedy can be a kind of accommodation – a way of managing lived experience… Continue reading Comedy as capitulation
Tag: Hannah Gadsby
Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer
Richard Gadd’s solo show, Baby Reindeer, which is just completing its run at the Edinburgh Fringe, has some similarities with Hannah Gadsby’s work. Both artists can only loosely be described as comedians at this point in their respective careers, given their preoccupation with explicitly traumatic material. Comedians have long used the often painful intimacies of… Continue reading Richard Gadd, Baby Reindeer
Hannah Gadsby and humourlessness
Hannah Gadsby, known primarily for her 2018 Netflix special, Nanette, has created another show which has just started touring. In The New Yorker, Hilton Als wrote a less than glowing review. Rather unfairly, given I haven’t seen the second show myself, his response has distilled some of my own suspicions. Justly commended for her attempts in Nanette to produce… Continue reading Hannah Gadsby and humourlessness
Humour in the Arts 