Playwright Lisa Tierney-Keogh is off to 'funny school' in New York, in the footsteps of Dan A ykroyd, Mike Myers and Bill Murray. Will it make a comic writer out of her?
When I was six years old, my mother had a job working with a friend of hers from his house. Every day when I finished school, while they worked in the next room, I was forced to watch the only video in the house, Monty Python's Life Of Brian. This was my mother's version of baby-sitting.
Two years later, at the age of eight, I would persecute her to let me stay up late to watch The Young Ones and Kenny Everett. I had my father tormented asking to watch yet another Cosby Show, and as I got older it was Blackadder, Not The Nine O'Clock News, Whose Line Is It Anyway, Reeves & Mortimer, Les Dawson on Blankety Blank, Fawlty Towers and every possible episode of The Muppet Show. And then came the stand-up comics on video. Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard, Alan Davies and of course oldies such as Tommy Cooper, The Goons and Morecambe & Wise.
Recently, I signed up to Sky "every channel under the sun" World, just so I could watch Frasier and Seinfeld till kingdom come. My mortgage is my excuse for being a social recluse but the truth is I would quite happily sit and watch comedy morning, noon and night.
Seven years ago, I studied acting at a seriously heavyweight theatre school in New York. On my return to Dublin, I discovered quickly I wasn't cut out for being an actor. Despite the attractions of bad pay, lousy hours and the gut-wrenching horror of auditions, I went back to the drawing board and racked my brains for minutes trying to think of something else to do that didn't involve serving cocktails, using spreadsheets or asking "do you want fries with that?"
With no better ideas, I started writing. What surprised me most about this career choice was not that it ticked all the boxes (huge financial stability, fame, fortune) but that everything I wanted to write was dark, heavy drama. I cursed my father for taking me to all those indie arthouse films. I kept asking myself the same question: why wasn't I writing comedy?
One rainy, mucky day earlier this year, I was "working" away in my office, browsing the internet, actively looking for distraction, when I found it. There, hovering in cyberspace, was the mothership of comedy. The website of the Second City Company from Chicago. My funny bones began to tingle as I searched around and finally found what I'd been looking for - an intensive course in writing comedy. Two weeks of funny school at the Second City Training Centre in New York. What, I thought, could possibly be better than that? I begged, borrowed and stole (from my own Grannie) to get myself a place, and now as the days go by, the course gets closer and there looms heavy in the air one great big stench of a question. Am I actually funny enough to pull this off?
Every time my impending journey into humiliation is mentioned to a friend or relative, there is a silence, a sort of "ah, bless" type silence. The pressure is on. So many great performers, directors and writers have come through the ranks of Second City. Minor names like Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, both Belushis, Mike Myers and the god-like Bill Murray. And now there's me. An unknown young one from Dublin with strong suspicions about her comic timing.
Every day for two weeks, I will "learn" how to write comedy. I suspect that each lesson will include a public humiliation involving stocks and rotten tomatoes. I am also highly aware of the probability that this ordeal will bring me embarrassment on a scale like I have never experienced before. I predict daily indignity and shame as I share with my fellow classmates what I think constitutes a good joke. They may even start a new course module, just for me, Pimp My Personality 101.
This really is no laughing matter. I may never live this experience down.
Despite all the potential humiliation and embarrassment, I am determined to make a go of this, to test myself. To take more than a few steps outside my comfort zone and see: can I do it? Can I make people laugh? And there it is, the biggest question of all, lingering above me like a black cloud. Am I going to be laughed with? Or laughed at? And the answer is, we'll soon find out.
- Next Friday: the serious business of funny school