Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.
Everybody loves to share a good laugh—laughing is like a human reset button; it allows a person to escape into a brief moment of lightheartedness and levity before snapping back into the stoicism that is deeply embedded within our society. As I grow older and as life becomes more demanding with grades, college applications, and work shifts in tow, I am finding it increasingly difficult to find comedy in my surroundings. Thus, I turn to media such as podcasts and TV shows and even seek out live comedy to supplement this wide chasm of stress within my life. In truth, I don’t think I’m the only one who is constantly seeking to find this happy medium.
There is a reason why some of the most popular shows on streaming sites and television are comedies. Shows like The Office and Parks and Recreation are entertaining because they depict seemingly normal people in the most outlandish of contexts. The writers on these shows create caricatures of ordinary people allowing their viewers to find humor in the status quo. Saturday Night Live, a household name for comedy, takes a satirical approach to often polarizing affairs in news, politics, and popular culture, making it more palatable for audiences. A program like SNL raises the notion that maybe comedy can be found in most contexts if we really look for them.
Major cities such as Boston often have their own local comedy scenes that might only be privy to a niche group of people. Theaters such as ImprovBoston and Improv Asylum offer weekly live improv shows from prices as low as $8 and $15. The summer of my sophomore year, I attended a weeklong comedy camp at ImprovBoston upon being inspired by Whose Line Is It Anyway? An improvisational comedy show in which famous comedians partake in a series of improv games in front of a live audience. This was hands down the most refreshing and emotionally rewarding week of my life. I had pure unadulterated fun for five hours every day for a week and I was simply given the freedom and space to play, free from any inhibitions or judgement.
I wish that more people would pursue improv as a hobby, especially high school students. It teaches people how to build entire narratives out of a seed of an idea and elicits a unique sense of adrenaline with every character that is crafted and every scene that is built. Audiences likewise find a thrill in seeing ordinary people create comedy solely through communication, interaction, the appreciation of the spontaneity of life.
In a similar vein of Improv Comedy, stand-up comedy has also grown in popularity. Stand-up comics such as Aziz Ansari, Cameron Esposito, and Ali Wong have garnered critical acclaim on platforms such as Netflix and Buzzfeed and continue to reach wide audiences today. I support these comics in particular because of their ability to make comedy intersectional as it is a field that is typically dominated by a single paradigm. Comedy is effective because how true it rings to audiences. Comedy is all the more effective if it reaches a wider span of audiences, and is indicative of the diversity of society today.
When I look at the world around me, I don’t see happy people. Everyone has become addicted to the normalities of their daily lives. We go to school, we go to work, we take care of our families. But it never really seems as if anyone is truly happy with themselves or the trajectory of their lives. Routine can be beneficial, but it becomes a problem when people fail to see outside of the parameters of their daily lives. It is human nature to build routine, but the second we fall out of them we panic and our entire day falls awry. I urge more people to take more time out of their day to engage in activities will alleviate their stress, whether it be by watching reruns of their favorite comedy, attending their first improv show with friends, or listening to a comedy-based radio show on their drive to work. Who knows, sooner or later one may find themselves introducing more laughter into their life, little by little.
