Risk and surprise: stand-up comedy in a relaxed venue

Abstract

When investigating relaxed performance, little attention has been paid to live stand-up comedy. The relaxed performance increases the accessibility and inclusivity of live theatre performances. Yet this poses great challenges to stand-up comedy, which often entails offensiveness and physical discomfort. This article focuses on the paradox between relaxed performance and stand-up comedy. It examines the challenges and positive effects of incorporating stand-up comedy into a relaxed venue through a case study of Evelyn Mok’s live comedy performance in a relaxed venue at a comedy event ‘Comedy without Victims’ held at Battersea Arts Centre in 2019. Combining the analysis of comedian-audience interactions with an interview between the author and Mok, this article contends that, although audience interruptions may disrupt the delivery of comedy routines and place the comedian in an uncertain status, the relaxed venue reshapes the comedian-audience relationship and galvanises the autonomy of audience members, particularly those who are socially marginalised. Consequently, it enhances the subversive power of stand-up comedy in challenging ableist ideologies in theatre conventions, disturbing the existing discussions about social divisions and addressing social injustice. In this regard, relaxed stand-up comedy acts as a democratic site where comedy performance propels and expands real social transformation.

Keywords:

• Relaxed performance
• stand-up comedy
• performance space
• audience interaction
• chinese comedian
• intersectionality

Introduction

In February 2020, Battersea Arts Centre, London, launched itself as ‘the world’s first Relaxed Venue’ (Battersea Arts Centre n.d.). It aims ‘to identify and dismantle the barriers faced by disabled people, based on the Social Model of disability’ (Battersea Arts Centre n.d.). Whilst more performance venues in the UK are increasing their accessibility for people with different needs, there is little research on how live performance, especially stand-up comedy performance, is affected by such changes. This paper examines the impact of a relaxed venue on live stand-up comedy performance by focusing on the event ‘Comedy without Victims’, an early exploration of presenting comedy shows as relaxed performance at the Battersea Arts Centre (also written as BAC in this paper) in March 2019.

This paper highlights the paradox in stand-up comedy in a relaxed venue between the so-called ‘good stand-up space’ (Quirk 2011, 225) and the set-up of a relaxed venue, and further, between the offensiveness inherent in live comedy and the claimed sense of security of a relaxed performance. First, I introduce the idea of ‘relaxed venue’ and provide an overview of the event ‘Comedy without Victims’. Next, with a particular focus on the ethnically Chinese female comedian—Evelyn Mok—performing in this event, I discuss the specific chain reaction elicited by the setting of a relaxed venue that changes the comedian-audience relation in live stand-up comedy performance. I argue that the relaxed venue poses new challenges to comedians to maintain control of their performance. On the other hand, by empowering diverse audience members, the relaxed venue galvanises the autonomy of the audience as well as that of socially marginalised people. Therefore, risky as it might be, stand-up comedy in a relaxed venue can help to identify the practical obstacles of performing comedy for a wider audience and advance our understanding of the segregation and connection between diverse people. It thus has particular significance in expanding the discourse of intersectionality and promoting comedy performance as a strategy of public engagement. The argument is divided into three aspects: the risk of performing stand-up comedy in a relaxed venue, the positive contribution of the audience and the political significance of relaxed comedy practice as a reformation of comedy performance and a real social transformation.

Methodologically, this article combines critical analysis of the performance and audience responses with a semi-structured interview between the author and Mok in October 2019. The observation of the BAC comedy event commenced when the author arrived at BAC well before the scheduled starting time of the comedy show. The author, as an audience member, not only witnessed the entire performance but also observed the process of audience members entering the performing space and settling down, thereby offering significant demographic insights into the audience composition of the show. However, the author’s observations, interview and analysis, similar to other qualitative research, inevitably involve potential bias and inaccuracy. Measures have been taken to mitigate them. For example, prior to this event, I had been familiar with many of Mok’s comedy routines performed at BAC through her previous live performances and recorded shows. Therefore, during Mok’s BAC performance, more attention was paid to Mok’s interactions with the audience rather than the delivery of her jokes, as nuances in the routines between each show had little impact on this research. Also, notes were taken immediately after the show when my memory was fresh to preserve the details of observations. A limitation is that, as part of the audience, I was unable to identify the characteristics of each audience member interacting with Mok, potentially leading to the generalisation of audience individuals. The interview was recorded and transcribed into texts immediately afterward. This interview employed open-ended questions to understand the comedian’s feelings about and reflections on this BAC comedy event, her comedy career and her relationship with Chinese communities in the UK and Europe. Meanwhile, as a Chinese female researcher, my position enabled me to approach the comedian with shared experience. This enabled us to share feelings and viewpoints more candidly, thereby enhancing the trustworthiness of this interview.

Relaxed venue and ‘Comedy without Victims’

The concept of a relaxed venue used in this article originates from the ideal of a relaxed performance, which was ‘initially designed to make theatre spaces more comfortable and welcoming to audience members with autism spectrum disorders, sensory and communication disorders or learning disabilities’ (Hall and Wilshaw 2022, 503). A wide range of audience members, including ‘parents with toddlers, people with Tourette’s syndrome, people who experience anxiety or anyone who is not comfortable with the conventions of a traditional theatre setting’ (503) can benefit from relaxed performances. Common measures of relaxed performances include ‘allowing exit out of and re-entry into the auditorium throughout the performance, leaving the house lights on dimly, designating a “chill out” area in the foyer which spectators can use during the show, reducing jarring audio and strobe lights, and training front-of-house staff and actors to accept higher levels of audience noise’ (Simpson 2018, 229). To build a relaxed venue is not to simply make the venue technically accessible to more people. It is a systematic reformation of the performing space that makes diverse people feel comfortable physically and mentally. This idea has been extensively applied to the whole theatre experience. For example, in collaboration with Touretteshero, co-founded by Jess Thom who curated the ‘Comedy without Victims’, BAC’s present ‘Relaxed Venue method’ focuses on six areas, ranging from the building itself, shows and artistic programmes to its website, social media, relationships with audiences, staff and volunteers and community building (Battersea Arts Centre n.d.).

The development of relaxed venues is a positive response to the social model of disability. Unlike earlier medical models which tended to regard disability as an ‘individual deficit’ to be cured and ‘to reduce the complex problems of disabled people to issues of medical prevention, cure or rehabilitation’, the social model identifies disability ‘as a culturally and historically specific phenomenon, not a universal and unchanging essence’ (Shakespeare 2013, 216). Instead of ‘personal tragedy’, disability is seen as an ‘externally imposed restriction’ (Oliver 2004, 19), a kind of social oppression which requires ‘barrier removal, anti-discrimination legislation, independent living, and other responses’ (Shakespeare 2013, 216). The social model provides momentum for diverse people to take up an active political stance, challenge the ableist norms and retrieve their rights. Accordingly, this article regards disability as a ‘“condition,” which not only connotes a medical diagnosis, but also a “state of being” that is provisional, not necessarily positive or negative, but that influences every aspect of our lives’ (Sandahl 2002, 22). The impacts of this condition, too, are not necessarily positive or negative, but contingent on its interactions with other social conditions.

Research on relaxed performance and relaxed venue often adapts the social model of disability to interrogate the legitimacy of current theatre conventions, including audience etiquette (Simpson 2018) and audience experience (Fletcher-Watson 2015), and to assess actual practice in art spaces (LaMarre, Rice, and Besse 2021). However, little scholarship can be found regarding the impacts of relaxed venues on live comedy performances. Meanwhile, research on disability and comedy mainly focuses on disability humour and disabled comedians who ‘entertain while reclaiming disability (Linton 1998)—challenging long-standing hierarchical relations, promoting social change and engaging in catharsis’ (Reid, Stoughton, and Smith 2006, 640). Yet, it has been unknown whether the disabled audience can wield their power through comedy and how disabled and non-disabled people converge in a comedy venue.

On the other hand, the concept of relaxed venue is not impeccable if we consider the fact that ‘one person’s idea of a relaxed space may be another’s accessibility nightmare’ (J. Watkin, pers. comm., June, 2017, quoted in LaMarre, Rice, and Besse 2021, 197). Hence, this article does not examine the extent to which this BAC comedy event is consistent with the features of the relaxed venue, which may turn the performance into a box-ticking exercise and ignore the political potential inherent in the modifications of the performing space. Rather, it asks what problems may appear in the practical application of relaxed venue in comedy and how we can envision relaxed comedy that further negotiates diverse needs and destabilises society’s ableist foundation.

The comedy event, ‘Comedy without Victims’, was part of the Festival of Rest and Resistance which was regarded as ‘a starting point for the BAC’s journey to becoming a relaxed venue’ (Hambrook 2019). The organisers of this festival wanted ‘to reframe comedy and create a relaxed environment where the audience and the performer agree that nobody will be singled out as the butt of the joke’ (Hambrook 2019), aiming ‘to showcase the very best of the UK’s disability arts scene’ (Battersea Arts Centre 2019). The performance venue of ‘Comedy without Victims’ was designed to be as inclusive as possible. Hosted in the spacious Council Chamber at BAC, it increased its accessibility for people with different needs. It helped eliminate physical barriers existing in most comedy venues in the UK, varying from comedy clubs and theatre buildings to arenas, that might ostracise disabled people. In this space, a projector screen hung over the stage. This allowed comedians to illustrate their comedic materials with pictures. On the right of the stage, another smaller digital screen displayed real-time captioning of performances on stage. Around these devices and the stage was the auditorium where arrays of chairs, cushions and mats were scattered for audience members. There was also a chill-out space behind the auditorium and outside the venue for relaxation. The audience could thus sit, lie down, leave and re-enter the space during the performance. These methods helped the audience who may not enjoy watching live performances in the same ways the majority of others did.

This space directly challenged the problematic ableist theatre etiquette which believes that audience members should be ‘fully aware of other audience members and their right to uninhibited enjoyment of any production’ (Gresham 2014, quoted in Wright 2014). Ostensibly, theatre etiquette is claimed to create a better experience for all. However, as Maddy Costa (2020) criticises, ‘For an art form so dedicated to thinking about human behaviour and interactions, theatre is remarkably bad at allowing its audiences to be human beings once they take their seats’. Some may exempt stand-up comedy from the restrictions of theatre etiquette, because unlike conventional mainstream theatre as ‘a serious business for which silence and a mentally alert but physically paralysed state is required of the audience for their own enjoyment’ (Heim 2015, 38), ‘audience interruption is itself a feature of stand-up comedy’ (Gilbert 2004, 54). Practically, however, frequent getting up and leaving the seat are still not encouraged by comedians and fellow audience members. Consequently, as Kirsty Sedgman (2018, 46) suggests, ‘for some people this actually means inhibiting their ability to participate at all’. Now, at BAC, live comedy effectively embraced ‘some people’ in Sedgman’s sense in this relaxed venue by telling its audience that disruptions were expected and welcomed.

Meanwhile, the construction of a relaxed venue and further, a relaxed performance was sustained by the content of the comedy performance and its participants. The theme ‘Comedy without Victims’ showed its intention to protect people from being the butt of jokes and thus to subvert and rewrite the narrative that ‘across history, disabled people have been the source of humour’ (Lockyer 2015, 1399). The event invited comedians including Annalisa Dinnella and Laurence Clark to perform. Their comedy shared the experiences of disability through a first-person narrative that turned disability from the butt of jokes to the subject and a unique perspective to understand life and society. Meanwhile, the advertisement announced that ‘where laughter sits matter, and we guarantee it won’t sit on you’ (Disability Arts Online n.d.). The event believed that ‘live comedy can make for an edgy and unpredictable experience, but does this always need to be at someone else’s expense, possibly yours? We don’t think so!’ (Disability Arts Online n.d.). These promotional texts suggested a caring environment for potential audience members who expected not only happiness but also a sense of security when watching live comedy performances.

With the increased accessibility and inclusivity, in comparison with most British comedy venues where the majority of the audience is non-disabled, more diverse audience members attended this event. Disabled people and their friends and families came to BAC and consisted of the majority of the audience.¹ The demographic change led to the formation of a new community in this relaxed venue. Yet, this temporary community should not be equated with a disabled community because it is worth noticing that this event was not held exclusively for disabled people. Nor is the concept of the relaxed performance exclusively coined for them. Rather, this new community indicates a connection built upon commonly recognised values and goals among the participants as suggested by the advertisements. In their discussion about the relaxed performance, Hall and Wilshaw (2022, 506) suggest that ‘by producing and policing arbitrary rules you can find out who belongs – and who doesn’t’. This is resonant with Lockyer and Myers’s (2011, 184) viewpoint from the perspective of the comedians that ‘the comedian’s attitudes toward what can/can’t be joked about, and how these resonate with the audience, in combination, help to create a sense of community’. The participants of this themed comedy event, including comedians and the audience, accepted the boundaries set by this new space which turned ‘laughing at’ into ‘laughing with’ as well as potential interruptions caused by fellow audience members and comedians simultaneously, thus forming a new community bonded by these boundaries. Yet, ideal as these boundaries seem to be, they may not be easily fulfilled. This newly formed community, as demonstrated in the following analysis, is elastic, constantly reframing itself in changing contexts.

The table was turned: an unrelaxed comedian in a relaxed venue

A relaxed venue cannot guarantee the success of a comedy performance performed in it. Rather, it poses new challenges to comedians due to an internal contradiction between stand-up comedy and the idea of the relaxed venue: one central problem that the relaxed venue intends to remove is the discomfort of physical barriers in the theatre and the offensive content of the performance, but what is important to stand-up comedy is exactly discomfort. This contradiction determines that in comparison with other forms of performing arts, it is even more challenging for stand-up comedy to reconcile sometimes ‘conflicting needs, interests and desires’ (Hadley 2022, 178) and thus accommodate itself to a relaxed venue. When investigating the venue of stand-up comedy, Sophie Quirk (2011, 229) notices that the space that packs the audience tightly may create physical discomfort, but ‘a more uncomfortable audience is considered more likely to be an amenable one’. Her idea is echoed by comedians. For example, Steve Martin (2007, quoted in Quirk 2011, 229) contends, ‘The more physically uncomfortable the audience, the bigger the laughs’. In short, a too-comfortable venue can be detrimental to the overall effects of a stand-up comedy performance. However, in a relaxed venue, anything that may create physical discomfort is expected to be removed. This contradiction is also evidenced in another factor of ‘a good stand-up space’ recognised by comedians that a good space should reduce ‘the challenges to the authority of the performer’ (Quirk 2011, 226). Distractions like unintentional vocal tics from the audience are undoubtedly unhelpful for the comedians to establish their authority of their comedic materials. Nevertheless, these distractions are inevitable in a relaxed performance.

Similarly, whilst this comedy event proposed that comedians should perform comedy materials that would not hurt anyone, discomfort is inherent in the content of stand-up comedy. To some extent, to offend and to create discomfort can be a driving force of stand-up comedy, because ‘part of the pleasure resides in being offensive’ (Billig 2005, 210). The subversive power of offensive jokes has been widely utilised to ‘undermine racism’ and ‘ridicule stereotypes of the disabled’ (Weaver and Morgan 2017). In these cases, discomfort may be created but acceptable for the audience. On the other hand, Weaver and Morgan (2017) notice that ‘the success of this “reverse joking” has a lot to do with the identity of the comedian—white and non-disabled comedians joking about black or disabled people have to work much harder not to reinforce stereotypes’. Therefore, for some comedians, offensive jokes are very likely to create discomfort that is unwanted by the audience. Even when the offensive jokes are carefully tailored with the intention of not hurting anyone, ‘a stand-up comic can never know the personal history of every person in his or her audience’ (Shouse 2020, 250). Hence, a joke might be read as a personal attack. As a result, the risk of unacceptable offensiveness always lies in stand-up comedy. This is the reason why Oliver Double (2014, 258) considers the relationship between the comedian and the audience as ‘the walking-through-a-minefield question of the politics of stand-up comedy’. More importantly, due to this paradox of (dis)comfort, when facing a more diverse audience where boundaries between offensive jokes and offensiveness can largely fluctuate, a relaxed comedy is more likely to contain the offensive and risky ‘mines’ in its content.

The paradox of relaxed stand-up comedy is evidenced in Evelyn Mok’s live comedy performance at BAC where the new comedian-audience relationship put her prepared routines into an unpredictable situation. Evelyn Mok is a plus-size, Swedish-born, ethnically Chinese female comedian and actress in her 30s. She has started to actively perform stand-up comedy since 2008 in the UK and Europe. Mok’s comedy highlights her personal experience of being a Chinese woman in Sweden and England. Her performance mostly deals with her Chinese family background, body shame and gender topics. Joanne Gilbert (2004, 24) notices that ‘the more marginal the performer, the greater the comic “capital” available to him or her’. Mok’s comic ‘capital’ largely comes from her marginal position in British society. With this ‘capital’, she challenges the dominant culture from the perspective of the other as a Chinese woman. For example, Mok once shared her experience of being called ‘his little Kung Fu Panda’ by a non-Asian man. Mok adopted a satirical tone, employing deliberate pauses between each word of this derogatory appellation to underscore the man’s absurdity and convey her disdain for him. Through this performative act, Mok effectively shifted her status from being an object subjected to the male gaze to being a subject with resistance against the male gaze. Mok has performed on diverse occasions, varying from Edinburgh Fringe to BBC World Service. From being a socially marginalised Chinese woman to becoming a stand-up comedian appearing on mainstream British cultural platforms like the BBC, it was not an easy journey for Mok to stand in the centre of the stage.

Most of the time, Mok presents a laid-back and relaxed posture onstage, flexibly shifting between self-deprecation and ironic critique of racists and sexists. However, experienced as she has been, in my interview with Mok, when reflecting on her BAC performance, she said

I found that performance really difficult. I felt very vulnerable. For some reason, I found it so difficult to deal with. I was a bit embarrassed when I felt that vulnerable because it’s like they are the vulnerable ones but then I was like the [tables were turned]. … It just ended up that I didn’t deliver (the performance well). (Evelyn Mok, pers. comm., October 19, 2019)

Mok’s unease on stage was largely linked to the audience. When diverse audience members were welcomed by this event and encouraged to participate in it in a relaxed way instead of abiding by theatre etiquette, their reactions to the live performance could result in a chain reaction which destabilises the dominant position of a comedian. In this performance, Mok’s usually relaxed and confident onstage persona was gradually dissolved by unexpected interruptions from the auditorium, whilst the control of her own performance was gradually transferred to the audience, even though she tried to regain it. In other words, in a relaxed performance, Mok, as one of the performers, became an unrelaxed comedian.

Firstly, inevitable interruptions in the relaxed venue are uncontrollable utterances from audience members affected by neurological disorders like Tourette’s syndrome. The unintentional recurring utterances like ‘biscuit’ and ‘sausage’ might randomly distract other audience members’ attention to Mok’s performance. Mok ignored these words when performing because they did not interfere with the content of her prepared jokes. However, Mok must respond to racist tics, because they directly counteracted the subversive effects of Mok’s anti-racist jokes. When Mok shared racist jokes written by her comedy teacher in Sweden, which were later used as the butt of her following anti-racist jokes, phrases like ‘Ching chong’ and ‘Chinese people’ from the auditorium were too loud to be neglected. She quipped that ‘that’s what the joke is actually. That’s one of the jokes’.² Racist utterances can be a challenge because they offer an opportunity for the audience to assess whether the comedian is genuinely committed to being anti-racist, as she claims. They also evaluate a comedian’s ability to improvise and maintain control of a performance. When Mok strategically incorporated racist phrases into her jokes, she effectively reinforced her anti-racist stance.

Another type of interruption is heckling from audience members, which can be ‘awkward, rude, and disruptive’ (Spitzberg and Cupach 1998, quoted in Shouse 2020, 248). It is noticeable that in comparison with heckling in a non-relaxed comedy show, heckling in a relaxed comedy space adds more difficulty for comedians to decipher and react to it due to its ambiguous intentions and indications. Usually, audience members ‘heckle comedians for a variety of reasons—they want attention, they want to “test” the comedian, or they hope to “help”’ or the most common reason that ‘they’ve been offended’ (Shouse 2020, 249), but the audience in a relaxed comedy show do not necessarily heckle the comedian for these reasons but might be affected by neurodiversity. Therefore, for comedians, it is harder to identify the source of the heckling and respond to it properly with tactics they often use in a traditional venue.

Heckling in ‘Comedy without Victims’ interfered with Mok’s pace of delivery and prepared comedy materials. When Mok talked about her diffidence when dating men due to body shame, an audience member asked her to shift the subject and tell another joke. This unexpected interruption caused Mok to pause for a few seconds to gather her thoughts on the next joke. Whilst ‘laughter is an expression of inclusion and conformity’ (Quirk 2016, 248), conversely, non-laughter reactions like heckling can be seen as an expression of direct dissatisfaction with Mok’s materials. Apart from the equivocal intention, Mok’s experience highlights another challenge of handling heckling in a relaxed venue: in such a space, audience members are encouraged to critically evaluate jokes and express their feelings freely. In other words, a relaxed venue amplifies the impact of heckling by placing the comedian in a position of being scrutinised and evaluated.

On the other hand, Mok did not passively wait to be heckled and heckling was not unsolvable to her. For example, when Mok realised that her jokes might not fully live up to the audience’s expectations, she employed tentative questions to examine the boundary. After a joke about menstruation, Mok paused and asked the audience ‘did I make any uncomfortable by bringing up periods?’. After hearing ‘no’ from the auditorium, she reconfirmed the audience’s attitude by saying ‘no? oh, that’s good, cause here’s more’. This question, posed in a relaxed tone, became another joke that successfully made the audience laugh. Regardless of whether the audience’s response would actually impact her subsequent comedy routines, inviting the audience to respond to the question implied the potential for straightforward expressions of disapproval and the potential transition of control of the performance from Mok to her audience members. While similar questions can be found in many live comedy shows where comedians play with the boundary of acceptance, in a relaxed venue where the expression of disagreement and disapproval is encouraged, there is more uncertainty about the audience’s responses, thus heightening the performer’s risk of being rejected by the audience. Hence, although Mok’s proactive gesture effectively reduced the chance of further offending the audience, it concurrently created new risks by temporarily handing over control of the performance to the audience members.

The interaction between Mok and her audience members demonstrates a dynamic power shuffle in the relaxed venue, nurturing a new comedian-audience relationship. To sustain a seemingly harmonious environment, Mok had to give up her earned comic capital as well as her controlling position as a comedian onstage by prioritising the audience’s expectations rather than defending her status more radically. Meanwhile, by actively participating in the comedy show where traditional theatre etiquette would have ostracised them, the increasingly empowered audience members demonstrated their autonomy as individuals capable of challenging the comedian’s dominant position.

This shuffle foregrounds the ignored power of the audience as well as that of the socially marginalised people. Gilbert (2004, 5) suggests that ‘the terms “marginality” and “minority” are not synonymous’. I agree with Gilbert that ‘minority is a quantitative concept dealing with sheer numbers, whereas marginality encompasses issues of power and control that are ideologically based’ (5). This is consistent with the social model of disability and reminds us of the autonomy of the marginalised people which is denied in the dominant ideologies and social constructions. Wilshaw suggests that ‘within an audience everyone has their own barriers, however this sometimes escalates more when barriers are put in place beforehand and preconceptions are in place’ (Hall and Wilshaw 2022, 504). In a relaxed venue, the autonomy of diverse people manifests when new rules eliminate the previous barriers imbued with preconceptions and biases. The audience members’ active impact on Mok’s performance essentially subverts the linkage between disability and ‘a lack of agency’ (Kuppers 2004, 5).³

Furthermore, the contrast between the active participation of audience members and Mok’s nervous state uncovers the long-term segregation between disabled and non-disabled people in daily life. As Mok stated in the interview, whilst the disabled audience were believed to be vulnerable, it turned out that it was she herself who felt more vulnerable when confronted with them. The twist between the presumption and the reality echoes the prevalent misunderstanding about disabled people which is reflected as the disability perception gap. Specifically, this concept refers to ‘the difference between the attitudes of non-disabled people and the reality of disabled people’s experiences’ (Dixon, Smith, and Touchet 2018, 3). Tom Shakespeare (1999, 49) writes, ‘In the presence of disabled people, many non-disabled people feel a certain tension’. Shakespeare (1999, 49) explains that ‘many non-disabled people may not have come into contact with disabled people, and may be both ignorant of what is expected, and anxious about saying the right thing’. Whilst Shakespeare notices this problem in 1999, Hall and Wilshaw (2022, 507) write in 2022 that ‘the general public can still seem a little uncomfortable around people with learning disabilities and can sometimes become fearful of behaviours which are unknown to them’. By now, disabled and non-disabled people are still often regarded as two segregated groups, whilst the former, according to the charity model of disability, are often believed to be ‘victims of circumstances who should be pitied’ (Retief and Letšosa 2018) by the latter. The tension can also partly explain why only a few non-disabled audience members attended this event. From the perspective of the general public, the comedy event highlighting accessibility and vulnerability may be instinctively associated with disabled people. Hence, this event might be mistakenly regarded as an exception for a certain group, aligning with the usual treatment of disabled people as an exception in other aspects of everyday life.

Consequently, instead of regarding Mok’s difficult situation as a singular and atypical case, I regard it as a reflection of the problems of an ableist society. We should consider them not only within the context of comedy to foster a more inclusive comedic performance for diverse individuals but also within the broader social context, aiming to bridge the gap. The metaphorical ‘land mines’ detonated in Mok’s comedic practice are part of the real social dilemmas that should not be easily dismissed with the phrase ‘it’s just a joke’, a common statement that trivialises the seriousness of comedy.

‘Too PC’? Positive audience in a relaxed venue

Interruptions during Mok’s performance do not signify that her performance is a total failure. Neither does it suggest that the comedian-audience relationship between Mok and her audience members at BAC was a minefield in ruins after the triggering of ‘land mines’. While audience members are afforded greater freedom to interrupt the performance, simultaneously, they are also bestowed with increased agency to positively engage in the show. The interactions between Mok and her audience members at BAC suggest an opportunity to transcend the segregation between people from different backgrounds in the relaxed comedy space. In fact, two weeks prior to this comedy event, Mok performed similar material in 2Northdown, a standard comedy performance venue in London. The different audience responses at the two shows offer a valuable resource for understanding the value of the relaxed performance.

The audience in the relaxed venue were the sensitive audience who could detect and respond to Mok’s uncertainty and help her deal with difficult situations. When Mok’s performance was interrupted by one audience member who uttered ‘I love Chinese’, another audience member told Mok to ‘go ahead’. Then, Mok quipped, ‘obvious, that’s not the worst heckle I’ve ever gotten’, smoothly returning to her prepared materials. The audience member’s words carried significance not only because they encouraged Mok to dismiss the interruption and granted her approval to resume the show, but also because they allowed Mok to address the racist phrases without offending the utterer whose behaviour might be an unintentional act. In this light, although Mok’s comic capital of being Chinese was challenged by the audience member who was also in a socially marginalised status, she simultaneously won empathy from the audience who sensed her vulnerability. Mok was unrelaxed, but she was also integrated into the community within this space.

Moreover, the relaxed venue provides a space where diverse audience members can engage in discussions of social issues involved in comedy routines and express their opinions. This is evident in the audience’s demonstrated consideration regarding political correctness. Phillip Deen (2020, 501) notes, ‘Contemporary comedy audiences are accused by some comedians of being too morally sensitive to appreciate humor’. However, when asked whether she agrees that today’s audience is ‘too sensitive’ and ‘too PC (politically correct)’, comedian Hannah Gadsby says, ‘If something as benign as political correctness can kill comedy, then comedy’s already dead’ (Cornish 2019). The audience’s sensitivity to political correctness in Mok’s performance proves that this is not inherently negative but can offer insights into how comedy can cater to a broader audience with greater consideration and care. For example, in a relaxed venue, the taken-for-granted narrative could be examined and corrected in a more inclusive context. When Mok talked about menstruation, she imagined that if men had periods, society would be in chaos. After her hilarious depiction of men menstruating their names on the snow in winter, Mok concluded that ‘so I think it’s lucky that it’s women who have all periods’ as an end of this routine. However, right after her words, within the laughter, a female voice from the auditorium said, ‘and trans men’. Hearing this, Mok added ‘and trans men’ as the formal end. The female audience’s reminder showed her sensitivity to a more inclusive way of expression.

The correction of speech demonstrates ‘an expansion of empathy’ (Deen 2020, 503) that considers the connection between socially marginalised identities. The audience members who experience discrimination, stigmatisation and ignorance are morally sensitive to similar dilemmas experienced by others. However, we should also recognise that the female audience’s empathy toward trans men was expressed at the cost of Mok’s face, because it simultaneously indicated Mok’s indiscretion.⁴ Mok’s authority as a comedian was directly challenged again by the audience member. This comedian-audience interaction again indicates the inherent problem in the concept of relaxed comedy: that what may be considered relaxed and empathy for one person can be perceived as a heckle to another. Moreover, Mok, as a comedian, had limited strategies to save face.

The expansion of empathy also happened when Mok’s physical vulnerability caused by body shame was sensed and supported by the audience. During the performance, Mok complained, in a self-pity tone, that being a plus-size woman, ‘I do not have sort of small, perky, stand-by-themselves, middle-class breasts’. These features made her feel diffident in intimate relationships. Her exaggerated description of her physical body and her association between the breasts and social class formed the butt of this routine. After the laughter, a female audience member said that ‘you have good-looking tits now’ and this audience member’s voice was instantly supported by fellow audience members. Mok happily replied that ‘oh yeah, I really hope they are’. By contrast, at 2Northdown, the same joke worked but Mok did not receive comparable encouragement from the audience, as was the case with the supportive female audience at BAC. The female audience perceived Mok’s lack of confidence and bodily vulnerability indicated in her jokes. More importantly, the audience’s sensitivity to Mok’s vulnerability added a twist to this self-deprecatory joke. While the original joke poked fun at Mok’s body, the body shame implied in this joke was now counteracted by the recognition of the value of Mok’s body.

Additionally, the diverse audience responses to Mok’s performance suggest that the individuality of each person is heightened in this relaxed comedy space. Audience members are no longer ‘a silent, undifferentiated, unspeaking mass’ (Simpson 2018, 232). Rather, an audience member is more aware of her ‘recognition, acknowledgement, and validation of her and her fellow spectators’ proximate embodied existences’ (232) in these intra-audience and comedian-audience interactions. Therefore, whilst some audience members challenged Mok’s performance intentionally or unintentionally, others stood with and supported her. In this light, the relaxed comedy also takes us back to the ‘primary value of live theatre’, the unique phenomenological experience of spectatorship among a co-present embodied audience’ (231), by echoing each other verbally and physically.

The empathetic moments between Mok and the audience members may boost our confidence in developing more inclusive comedy materials. Yet, practically, the lack of experience demonstrates the urgency of more relaxed comedy practices. In our interview, Mok said ‘I feel like maybe I should have done more research to prepare myself more’ (Evelyn Mok, pers. comm., October 19, 2019). Her reflection can be seen as representative of a broader group of comedians who occupy a comparatively privileged status from certain perspectives but do not adequately prepare themselves for new situations in the relaxed venue. At this juncture, it is persuasive that research should not be targeted solely at a specific audience group, such as the disabled, under the assumption that they are more vulnerable. Mok’s experience has debunked this notion. Instead, research should focus on fostering equal engagement in the realm of stand-up comedy, where comedians and audience members, irrespective of their identities, can enjoy the performance. In this case, ‘only experience can teach a comedian what will work best in each situation, and even experience is no panacea’ (Shouse 2020, 262). Only in the exploration of the ‘land mines’ can we truly find ways of ‘steering the perception of relaxed performance away from a charity-centric model to a theatrical form valued in its own right’ (Simpson 2018, 234). In other words, whilst identifying ‘land mines’ in each singular performance case by case is one approach, the ultimate goal is to uncover the broader landscape of stand-up comedy to benefit a more extensive audience.

Reframing stand-up comedy: relaxed stand-up comedy as stand-up comedy itself

In practice, identifying ‘land mines’ in stand-up comedy has particularly significant political value that encourages public engagement and propels social change. When we envision the relaxed stand-up comedy that both comedian and audience can truly enjoy, we are also envisioning the social construction that diverse people can engage in with more freedom and equality.

A relaxed stand-up comedy venue suggests changes in the way we use space. It thus reallocates the power of comedy space as part of public space. Essentially, space itself is a kind of resource as well as power. Friedrich Ratzel (quoted in Bauman 2006, 187) writes that ‘the struggle for existence means a struggle for space’. The relaxed venue is in no doubt the result of a struggle for diverse people’s existence in the performing space. Moreover, as Carrie Sandahl (2002, 23) suggests, ‘All spaces are inherently ideological’. Stand-up comedy space conveys its ideologies by offering ‘a stage, a platform and a voice—all of which create opportunities to gain or reclaim influence, capital and power’ (Abebe 2018, 59). Through performance and attending the performance, certain ideologies are diffused and enhanced whilst other ideologies are excluded. If we interpret the term ‘relaxed performance’ literally, we can say that conventionally, stand-up comedy has already been the relaxed stand-up comedy for ‘the dominant same that is founded upon ableist, heteronormative, adult, white European and North American, high-income nation’s values’ (Goodley 2017, 88), because few barriers are established for these people to enjoy the show and most comedy routines are made for them. The present relaxed comedy venue empowers socially marginalised people to question, challenge and subvert this ideological foundation of stand-up comedy space through their physical presence and interaction with the space. By prioritising the needs of people excluded by previously dominant ideologies, new rules of the space are set; jokes are scrutinised from different stances. Consequently, a new consensus about who is welcomed and which ideologies are valued in comedy performance is established through ongoing negotiation within the space.

This negotiation, reflected by the audience’s laughter and non-laughter responses, particularly enhances the subversive power of live stand-up comedy when the diverse physical embodiments disturb the existing discussions about race, gender, class and other social divisions that imply imbalanced power relations. Sandahl (2002, 20) notices that ‘disability becomes a distinct minority community that has been excluded from full participation in society because of discrimination in education, employment, and architectural access’. However, disability can be ‘a vantage point, a perspective, a way of experiencing the world’ (Sandahl 2002, 26). By inviting more diverse participants, the relaxed stand-up comedy can develop ‘difficult conversations across socio-cultural categories and forms of interpellation to ask how, for example, disability, gender, race, sexuality and class constitute or contradict one another’ (Goodley 2017, 87). It helps us to rethink the social injustice indicated in the jokes in a more comprehensive and nuanced way. This has been evidenced in Mok’s performance at BAC in which diverse audience members interacted with her jokes about ethnicity and gender. Through diverse responses that reflect the prism of diverse people, stand-up comedy has the potential to seek the common patterns of different structures of power, the shared goals of people oppressed and unnoticed conflicts between social divisions.

Furthermore, changes in the comedy space reframe stand-up comedy as a form of popular entertainment ontologically. By challenging the previously dominant ideology of stand-up comedy, the form and the content of stand-up comedy are altered for diverse people rather than accommodating them to it. Sandahl writes, ‘as long as disabled people attempt to conform to established theatrical forms’, they ‘will always be considered “problems” to be dealt with rather than as an artistic constituency with unique offerings’ (Sandahl 2002, 21). On the contrary, relaxed stand-up comedy problematises the norms rather than its participants by asking what a comedy space could be like.

In Utopia in Performance, Jill Dolan (2005, 2) argues that ‘live performance provides a place where people come together, embodied and passionate, to share experiences of meaning making and imagination that can describe or capture fleeting intimations of a better world’. Dolan calls for ‘utopian performatives’, namely ‘small but profound moments in which performance calls the attention of the audience in a way that lifts everyone slightly above the present, into a hopeful feeling of what the world might be like if every moment of our lives were as emotionally voluminous, generous, aesthetically striking, and intersubjectively intense’ (5). However, the eligibility to join these moments is not addressed by Dolan. This ideal can now be the goal of relaxed comedy in the future, where people, regardless of their backgrounds, can laugh together and experience utopian performatives.

This paper thus contends for the ongoing reformation and normalisation of relaxed stand-up comedy as stand-up comedy itself, paving the way for utopian performatives and maximising the impact of stand-up comedy as an effective strategy of public engagement and social transformation. By ‘reformation’, I suggest that we should further optimise the comedy space for its broader participants, negotiate the conflicting needs of diverse people and test comedic routines within this space. For example, we shall not forget that Mok also deserves our empathy. When we are discussing how the space accommodates more diverse people, we should also consider how marginalised comedians can continue employing their comic capital in it. By ‘normalisation’, I suggest that we should further sever the link between relaxed stand-up comedy and any particular group of people, which treats the relaxed performance as ‘an awkward appendage’ (Sandahl 2002, 26) in contrast with the so-called normal or standard stand-up comedy. Everyone could be defined as disabled because ‘we never match up to the ableist ideal’ (Goodley 2009, x). The relaxed comedy should be comedy itself rather than a subordinate category. In this way, the space of laughing together can truly be a democratic site, contributing to broader social movements for changes and further, to ‘a potentially better future’ (Dolan 2005, 8).

Conclusion

Establishing a relaxed venue is an important development of the theatre venue. It provides a way of examining preconceptions such as ‘vulnerability’ and ‘marginality’ and unravelling the socially constructed binaries that ‘come to carry heavy weights of excess meaning’ (Kuppers 2004, 5). Mok’s performance studied in this paper illustrates the distinctive value of a relaxed venue for stand-up comedy. The subversive power of stand-up comedy can be heightened within a relaxed venue, where the audience can challenge modes of participation and the comedic narrative. Although performing stand-up comedy in a relaxed venue entails inherent risks, it defends the power of audience members from social minorities and provides opportunities to discern the genuine connections among socially marginalised people and intersectional conflicts obscured within a world that predominantly caters to so-called ‘normal people’. Hence, relaxed comedy performance should be normalised as stand-up comedy per se. This is not merely a reformation of entertainment, but also a political act.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yingnan Chu

Yingnan Chu is a recent PhD graduate in Drama from the University of Exeter. Her PhD research focuses on ethnically Chinese comedians in Britain, exploring the role of stand-up comedy in interpreting one’s identities. She is also more generally interested in the interplay between comedy, mundanity and trauma, audience reception in live comedy performances, the ethics of humour and British East and Southeast Asian performing arts.

Notes

1 Disabilities can be visible and non-visible. This paper, with the author’s observation, identifies differences between audience members’ conditions through wheelchairs, walking sticks and specific behaviours whilst acknowledges that some conditions may not be disclosed. More importantly, although this paper, in the following analysis, shows that disabled audience members reacted to comedy performances in their own ways, it does not suggest the correlation between specific disabilities and their responses which requires further investigation. In other words, whilst the audience members might experience different disabilities, their different responses to the jokes were not necessarily the result of differences in disabilities.

2 Since live performances were not recorded, the transcript is not strictly transcribed from the original live performance word-for-word, but it remains close to the original text as much as possible.

3 Petra Kuppers (2004) provides a detailed explanation about disability as a social discourse and its connections with race and gender in Disability and Contemporary Performance Bodies on the Edge.

4 In this paper, ‘face’ refers to the concept ‘face’ defined by Erving Goffman (1965) as ‘the positive social value a person effectively claims for himself’ by acting or presenting oneself in certain ways in social interactions. When Mok’s narration was corrected by the audience, she lost face because her act was not supported by the audience.