Tragic situations can occasionally yield laughter. Such laughter comes as the release of built-up negative tension. One thinks automatically of a funeral. Here, the buildup of negative tension is so great that it is sometimes released through hysterical laughter. What a shame it is that hysteria should only come in such profoundly negative situations, or if it does not, that it should come so seldom otherwise.

A few weeks ago, I found myself engrossed in a late-night re-watching of The Shining. I hadn”€™t watched it in at least fifteen years and was amazed that it could still have such a chilling effect. By the time Jack Nicholson’s character stumbled backwards out of the bathroom of Room 237 having discovered he”€™d been tongue-kissing not a beautiful young woman but a rotten-fleshed old hag, I was so wired-up with fear that I burst out not crying or screaming”€”as you might expect”€”but laughing. (Unfortunately I wasn”€™t alone in the room, and I had to explain to the person I was with”€”alas, my Mum”€”that I wasn”€™t criminally insane.)

If someone is depressed or frightened in real life, they will not be able to experience a buildup of the positive or negative tension normally brought about by exposure to a comic or tragic situation. They will be unable to laugh. They will also be unable to make other people laugh. And this makes stand-up comedians such impressive human beings. 

Stand-up comedians must either have no fear or show no fear. They must not let any problems they have in their private lives affect their work while making sure they are laughed with (and not at), all while not letting themselves be consumed and then destroyed by fear.

For what could be a more counter-logical position than being onstage, alone, frightened, in front of scores of negatively and positively charged people, having both to deal in comedy and hand out laughter? No wonder stand-up comedy is considered the most rare and difficult of skills. It goes against logic. It goes against nature. It doesn”€™t make sense. It shouldn”€™t exist! If to create, perform, and appreciate comedy is human, then to perform stand-up comedy successfully is approaching the superhuman.