The great American comedian George Carlin once said that although comedy isn’t one of the fine arts – “it’s a vulgar art; it’s one of the people’s arts” – the writing that goes into comedy is an art form. “It’s certainly artistry,” he said.
So far, however, Ireland hasn’t officially acknowledged comedy as an art: it’s not recognised in the Arts Act, and so funding for comedy is not available from the Arts Council.
That could be about to change because of a Bill going through the Dáil that will add comedy in all its forms – including stand-up, improv and sketch – to the legislation.
The woman advocating for this is the stand-up Ailish McCarthy, who had been surprised to find out how many fellow comics had been turned down for Arts Council funding. “We want the same access to existing resources as everyone else and don’t want to be discriminated against on the basis of being a comedian,” she says.
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I started doing comedy in 1988, in a sketch troupe called Mr Trellis, along with Ardal O’Hanlon, Barry Murphy and Dermot Carmody. That year we set up the Comedy Cellar with Karl MacDermott. For six years our only subsidy came from the dole, as we avoided “real” work to allow us to explore our comedy.
In my experience comedy was certainly a dirty word when it came to Arts Council grants. I was lucky enough to receive one to write a novel that was set at Edinburgh’s comedy-heavy fringe festival and explored issues of audience but was a “funny” book. I made sure to downplay the comic aspect in my application.
Others have had similar experiences. “I’ve only received Arts Council funding once in my career,” says the comedian Sharon Mannion, who is also the Comedy Cellar’s booker. That was “to write and work on a new show, but I made sure to frame it in the context of a theatre show in the application, as opposed to leaning on the comedy aspect of my work ...
“I don’t know why there appears to be an aversion to comedy from the Arts Council and why stand-up isn’t considered an art form. It has never made sense to me.”
It’s perhaps doubly strange given comedy’s importance in Irish literature and playwriting, from Laurence Sterne to Samuel Beckett – his characters in Waiting for Godot are based on music-hall acts – to Flann O’Brien, and on to the cracked comedy of Kevin Barry, the deadpan of Nicole Flattery’s Show Them a Good Time and the dirty-cartoon exuberance of June Caldwell’s Room Little Darker.
Martin McDonagh’s early plays took the Irish tradition of JM Synge and Seán O’Casey and put it through a knowing dark-comedy blender. Humour bubbles up to the surface of much Irish art – it’s already a main ingredient of our lives: David McSavage satirically probes a nation; Tommy Tiernan excavates the soil in the Irish blood; Dylan Moran offers a surreal philosophical examination of a nation.
In different ways they each focus a unique spotlight on Irish society and the human condition, rivalling that of any novel or play. In recent years there has been an explosion of women comics – Deirdre O’Kane, Emma Doran, Joanne McNally and my sister Anne Gildea among them – each reflecting on their world and presenting it to an ever-growing female audience.
Comedy – stand-up, sketch or whatever its nature – has every right to be called an art form. It is often a naming of our shared experience; communal laughter is a confirmation of and release from this shared experience in a world that can seem increasingly alienating and atomising. It is an event of community.
I have toured as support with Jason Byrne, whose audience return to see him year after year. I saw them welcoming back an adopted son who arrives with made-up stories of his travels while catching up with their lives too.
Jason recently did a show about his father, called Paddy Lama: The Shed Talks. It was a brilliantly moving theatrical production that illustrated the power of stand-up as a generative force.
The resistance to comedy being recognised as an art form may have something to do with a perception that comedy is a business venture. That may be true for top-level comics who play large venues year after year, but below them are hundreds of comics performing in smaller spaces. Here lies the importance of the comedy club.
Lorcan Hughes is a comedian and musician who 12 or 15 years ago applied to the Arts Council for money to run a comedy club. He saw that some music clubs got funding as long as they offered a platform for new acts. When he sought to apply that model to comedy, it was a no-go.
Comedians need comedy clubs.
Brian Coughlan has been running City Limits in Cork for 33 years. He points out a relatively recent challenge for comedy clubs.
“Over the last couple of years theatres have become our biggest competitors,” he says. “They have changed direction from plays with actors to more and more stand-up shows. Theatres can do shows with less risk, as they get a lot of funding. If comedy clubs were to get funding for comedy, then we could do more comedy, more nights, and compete on a level playing pitch.”
Coughlan flags a major role of clubs like his. “Every big comedian you see in a full theatre began, and cut their teeth, in a comedy club. So Arts Council funding would help nurture and develop the next generation of comedians, to keep our stand-up industry strong.”
Mannion adds: “As booker of the Comedy Cellar, I’m more aware than ever of the lack of supports that currently exist. Every individual comedy club is out there in isolation, operating on their own, trying to sell enough tickets and get enough punters in so there’s something to pay the acts a few quid.
“In the majority of cases the running of these clubs is driven by a passion for the art form. It’s certainly not an easy way to make a quick buck ... When every single decision has to be made from a commercial perspective, it doesn’t leave much room for exciting creative expression and experimentation.”
McCarthy has been involved in setting up the Irish Comedy Guide website, as a way of helping comedians develop their careers. This free service, which she says she isn’t paid to provide, “has become a platform for comics to get visibility on workshops and training days, as well as artist open calls they can apply for”.
She also approached the Arts Council to be an external adviser, “to close this gap on the knowledge of comedy as an art form”. But it told her last year that “if I am an adviser I will not be able to apply for Arts Council funding, due to conflicts of interest”. So she dropped her interest in the role.
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The council says it is “beginning a large-scale research project into current and emerging art forms and art practice in Ireland, to be completed in summer 2025. The results of this research will assist in evaluating the Arts Council in how we can be more inclusive of evolving art forms and arts practices in our funding.”
If the law changes, it will be thanks to legislation introduced by the Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh, who with his party colleague Eoghan Ó Finn contacted McCarthy earlier this year as part of a survey of the arts in Ireland, “to find out what barriers comedy faces in the current climate”, she says.
The result was Ó Snodaigh’s introduction of the Arts (Recognition of Comedy) (Amendment) Bill 2024, which will add the single word “comedy” to the legislation that defines which art forms the council includes it in its supports, policies and structures.
The proposed legislation is at the second of the 11 stages it needs to pass before it becomes law: five in the Dáil and five in the Seanad, followed by its signing by the President.
McCarthy is hopeful. “I see this Bill passing,” she says. “It would mean that we would have the same access as all existing performing artists to mentorships, writing desks, development days, training, workspaces.”
Until then, Mannion says, the current lack of funding means that “only individuals who have the financial means to support themselves in other ways have the option to purse stand-up comedy as a career. That doesn’t seem fair – and, perhaps even more importantly, doesn’t seem like the smartest way to ensure we hear from the most exciting and original voices.”
