Seriously Funny: An interactive humour survey

Fun, joking and satire have been left to the lay person for too long. Comedians may think of themselves as professionals, but they are dealing with something they don’t really understand. In reality total amateurs have been cracking gags, others have been tittering and very little of this spontaneous mirth has been quantified, spreadsheeted and analysed by scientific statisticians. No more. This event will demand a firmly empirical approach to humour.

Writer and performer Christopher Green poses as a Public Outreach Facilitator from a new think tank set up by the prime minister to examine humour in modern Britain. Gordon Brown’s posse are keen to win over the satirists to their side, to harness the traditional power of the comic, and to know what the jokes are on the street before they are even cracked. So they’ve appointed scientists to mingle with the great British public at the Dana Centre to try and understand in a no-nonsense way what humour really is. Punters will be asked for their valued input in deciding what’s funny. It’s interactive, and the evidence-gathering takes many forms, from an extended performance piece from Christopher Green, to installation performances around the centre and one-on-one feedback sessions.

Puerile and profound, and cunningly controversial, this experiential piece asks questions about science, government and freedom, but also has some cracking good jokes. Someone wanted to call the night ‘Stats Out for the Lads’, but Gordon Brown didn’t think that was funny.

Event organised by:
The Science Museum

Speakers

Chris Green, comedian

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