The Performance is the Thing
Audiences want to be dazzled and don’t care about the hard work
Superb stand-up comics make it look easy. The best jokes are shared naturally, as if they were banter between friends in a bar. They come across as spontaneously told stories, improvised on the spot, which makes the inevitable yet surprising punchline all the funnier and more satisfying.
That illusion couldn’t be further from the truth. Comics admit to nonstop toil and testing, interspersed with trepidation and terror. Jokes are written, tediously edited, and verified funny based on the reactions of a live audience. What seems solid on the page, often bombs in performance.
A good joke is gold, a diamond in the rough. Rarities are strung together into a polished version of a complete act, similar to hours of film left on the cutting room floor to create maybe a minute of final cut within a movie. The jokes within a comic’s active repertoire are far fewer than they seem.
The result is original content that gets repeated, as the meta saying goes, “repetitiously and redundantly, over and over again.” Each performance, with minor variation and limited improvisation, is nearly identical to the last and the next. After the recipe is refined, the cakes are baked by rote.
The audience doesn’t care. They sit on the opposite side of the proscenium arch, the fourth wall, and have opposite expectations from the star on stage. The performer is actively working, while their audience is passively receptive. Fans are eager for excitement, credulous until the talent bombs.
The audience experiences every performance as if that performance were performed for the first time, and just for them. If they thought about it, they would realize the performer has performed this same act before, and will do it again. But they don’t think — they simply want to be entertained.
Live music is doubly strange, seeing how raving fans are already familiar with the material. Hearing their favorite songs played yet again in front of thousands is hardly a buzz kill. The opposite is true when adored repeat content is reborn as original music, effortlessly brought to life in the flesh.
Same goes for restaurants, and Disneyland. Diners select from a limited menu of already popular items; amusement park guests choose between vomit-inducing rides designed by engineers. Millions of comfort meals served, or extreme rides ridden, crowds believe each experience is unique.
All quality entertainment is the output of hard work and testing, consists of original content repeated to serve multiple audiences. The battle against entropy, the fight against raw thermodynamics is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. Positive return on investment is the goal.
“The play’s the thing,” said Hamlet to Clausius, hinting he knew who killed dad, as revealed by the play-within-a-play. The Bard meant more than that, of course, hinting that he knew, as the Ghost, that the writer of the entire play was the Playwright himself, who finally, if rarely, got cheered on stage.
The rub for creators, from Shakespeare to unknown ghost writers, is not performing the performance part. That’s akin to the army of computer programmers and graphic artists who bring amazing worlds to the movies: nobody cares how they did the CGI — paying customers just want their I.
If audiences don’t care how much blood, sweat, and tears a comic put into their routine to make it seem spontaneous, effortless, and funny, then they care even less about the effort that went into an entertainment with no discernible tie-back to its creator. The audience is thrilled in the moment.
David Mamet has eulogized the diminishing clout of writers in Hollywood, citing their downfall from Burbank Studios’ Olympus as the major reason most contemporary movies suck. The dumbing-down of film with pointless voice over narration, and drama-destroying backstory, are proof he’s right.
Nobody knows how to read a script, because nobody wants to be a reader, let alone a writer. Don’t get me wrong — the profession is viciously competitive — but few “writers” exist in the true meaning of that word. Most instead build scaffolding for layering tons of generic zing and schmaltz.
Everyone wants to be a star, on stage or on screen where performers perform, and audiences cheer. The allure is as powerful as the illusion is convincing. Similar to politics, the bigger the lie, the more zealous its believers. As Nietzsche wrote, the Birth of Tragedy was pre-Socratic.
The inevitable yet surprising punchline to this joke of the fallen writer is the artificial intelligence revolution. Spawned by large language models that can pass the bar exam, code their own computers, and compose masterful essays, their statistical engines still have the IQ of a goldfish.
The audience does’t care. Neither do most writers, who dive into their ChatGPT, Bard, and ilk to do the heavy lifting of writing. Don’t get me wrong here, either — these impressive apps have their use, and will soon transform all of our lives. Let them. My fear is the peril of ease of use.
Jack White listened to a few Son House songs, and experienced divinity in their raw, atonal, syncopated grandeur. Great music, like great art, rips your heart out. Inspiration that fuels creativity isn’t found in software and chiseled silicon, but dead leaves and the dirty ground. Creativity hurts.
Full circle, the funniest humor is loaded with schadenfreude. Devoid of digging deep, we come up empty; without heavy lifting, we’re lightweights. The audience might not realize it, but their laughter is the sublimated agony of the comic they extol, standing alone on stage, utterly mortified.
Perhaps suicide was the only experience left for Anthony Bourdain, who revealed that blood, sweat, and tears are necessary ingredients for the best recipes. The performance has always been, and will always be, the thing. Yet we have no choice but to pay attention to the writer behind the curtain.
