Autism and comedy: using theatre workshops to explore humour with adolescents on the spectrum

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses a project that used comedy workshops to explore the humour of autistic teenagers, focusing the discussion around three traits often – and negatively – associated with autism. The paper will then point to ways of rethinking these traits, and argue that doing so opens up a space for considering the aesthetics of comedy on the spectrum. In this way, I suggest that we can understand autistic humour on a model of difference rather than deficit.

KEYWORDS:

• Autism
• Asperger’s
• comedy
• humour
• neurodiversity
• disability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Shaun May is Lecturer in Drama at the University of Kent and author of A Philosophy of Comedy on Stage and Screen and Rethinking Practice as Research and the Cognitive Turn. He was Primary Investigator on the BA/Leverhulme funded project, Comedy on the Spectrum: Exploring Humour Production in Adolescents with Autism.

Notes

1. This project was funded by a BA/Leverhulme Small Grant, Ref: SG142370. The co-investigators were Dr David Williams (Kent, Psychology) and Dr Oliver Double (Kent, Drama). Dr Marcelo Bere and Hannah Newman worked as research assistants.

2. Participants were recruited through the Psychology department, using the criteria for what is commonly described as ‘high-functioning autism’ within this discipline – i.e. a formal diagnosis of autism or Aspergers, and an IQ score of 70 or above. Although the terms ‘high-functioning’ and ‘low-functioning’ are often used in autism research they are unpopular within the autistic community (Baker and Walsh 2013) and ‘autistic with/without an intellectual disability’ is preferred. I share these reservations about the functioning labels, but we recruited participants using the criteria above to ensure we were studying a similar cohort to those in previous studies on autism and humour, such as Wu et al. (2014), which ultimately I aim to critique.

3. There is an ongoing debate within the autistic community about whether it i's better to use person-first (‘person with autism’) or identity-first (‘autistic-person’) language (e.g. Sinclair 2012). To avoid picking a side on this, I use the two phrases interchangeably throughout.

4. One participant, for example, had a routine about the British children's show Teletubbies.

5. Pseudonyms are used for all participants throughout this article.

6. Stimming is a term commonly used within the autistic community to describe repetitive motor behaviours.

7. It 's perhaps worth being clear that the ‘audience’ in this context was the other participants – there was no external audience and the participants were sharing material within this relatively small group. Additionally, although the audience laughing or ‘getting the joke’ was really useful as an indicator of a gag working, the emphasis within the workshops was much more on the performer than audience.

8. www.autismandcomedy.com/stickup.

9. The idea of ‘blocking’ is defined here by Keith Johnstone. ‘I call anything that an actor does an “offer”. Each offer can either be accepted or blocked … A block is anything that prevents the action from developing, or that wipes out your partner’s premise’ (Johnstone 1989, 97).

10. See also Walters (2013) and Heilker (2012).

11. This is in addition to, rather than instead of, written consent received by the parent/caregiver.

12. See Samson (2013) for a concise literature review.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a British Academy / Leverhulme Small Grant award [grant number SG142370].