ESSAYS

Last Laughs

This essay is concerned with the question of laughter and it’s relationship to performance and death. Looking at how performance acts as a rupture in systems representation, the essay explores the dynamics of failing performances, drawing surprising links between the work of the 60s and 70s British comic-magician Tommy Cooper and the solo performance work of the American experimental theatre actor Ron Vawter. The work of these two artists becomes the scene for an investigation of masculinity in crisis, where performances of male hysteria are seen to open significant questions around identity, sexuality and death. The exploration of the meaning of laughter through and beyond these works is shadowed by questions of self-loss; found in the return to states of childhood and in the forgetting of one’s self that takes place in Alzheimer’s disease. The essay combines autobiographical material with critical theory and records of action and sound elements.

Last Laughs is published in On Correspondence an issue of the journal Performance Research, Vol. 9 No. 2, 2004, ISSN 1352-8165.