Special editorial

Abstract

The global COVID-19 pandemic has caused extraordinary effects on all our lives, right across the globe. The need to socially distance and the abrupt switch to online and digital means of communication have irrevocably changed the way that we interact for the purposes of creating community, for business and educational purposes and for the production and consumption of culture and art. Comedy, as a form of entertainment, has been hit particularly hard. Effective live comedy relies on performer and audience interplay within a complicit community; the audible sound of laughter as a reciprocal mechanism of assessing the interaction; the appearance of spontaneity; and expertise in the use of timing and other craft skills that are reliant on the here-and-now engagement. Each of these elements are especially difficult to replicate or reproduce through digital platforms. How, then, have comedians around the world managed this dramatic shift in the delivery and reception of their creative work? Comedy Studies has asked five international friends and correspondents to provide a pen-portrait of the situation that comedians in their respective areas have faced in the time of the global pandemic. Each give their take on how practitioners have responded to the exigencies caused by the crisis. Ellie Tomsett reports on the UK situation; Eric Shouse on North America; Ignatius Chukwumah on Africa; Anastasiya Fiadotava on East European; and Cale Bain on Australia and New Zealand. We also include a special article on this topic in Humour and Coronavirus: Coping with the Pandemic in Ghana by Susanna Adjei Arthur. We are hugely grateful for all their perspectives which together, will hopefully, give a round-up of Comedy in the time of Covid, while illustrating Marshall McLuhan’s prophetic observation in 1964 about ‘the ability of the artist to sidestep the bully blow of new technology of any age, and to parry such violence with full awareness’ (71). We are also happy to be able to provide our usual eclectic mix and range of articles on more general business of Comedy Studies. These cover perspectives on darkly prophetic foreshadowing in the US Sitcom Cybill; gender struggle in The Cambridge Footlights; The ‘comic triple’ mechanism: The Book of Mormon; Morecambe and Wise; Schitt’s Creek and stand-up comedy and incarceration.