Theatre

Mark Ravenhill says that, though several comedians have turned to straight theatre in recent years, playwrights could also benefit from what comedy might offer them. Now he’s appearing in a double-bill at the Bush Theatre with comedian Stewart Lee. Ravenhill’s one-man play ‘Product: World Remix’ – which he performs – is a satirical take on how a Hollywood director tries to persuade a Western actress to appear in a film in which she falls for a member of an Al-Qaeda cell. Lee’s stand-up show, ‘What Would Judas Do?’, invites audiences to imagine Judas as a man a little like Lee himself, and the frustrations he experiences in the last week of Christ’s life, when Jesus fails to live up to his expectations. As the comic and the playwright/performer prepare to appear on the same stage – admittedly at different times of the evening – we ask them about the differences and similarities between stand-up and theatre, and what they can learn from each other. Feature continues

Is performing comedy more about instant gratification than theatre – because of the laughs it demands?

Stewart Lee I think that can make it harder – it’s more difficult to pretend in comedy that something’s gone right if it hasn’t.

Mark Ravenhill Do you have any personal rules about how many laughs you’re supposed to get?

SL Well, no, because I go uncharacteristically slowly. One big one every three or four minutes is all right if there’s none in the intervening time. But I remember going on stage at a gig in Fulham about ten years ago, and a bloke heckling me, saying that I was going too slowly – he’d paid for jokes, and I wasn’t doing enough jokes per minute. And I got into this really great discussion with him on stage about what he considered represented value for money.

Could you argue that in a sense theatre’s about creating illusions, and comedy’s about busting them?

MR I don’t want to create illusions.

But you want people to believe in the stories you tell.

MR No, I want them to question it and think about it. I like laughter in theatres. I like the sense of people stepping back from a subject, moving around a character – that’s how I see the theatre. I expect a theatre audience to question and think.

And heckle?

MR It depends on the form of theatre. But in panto, yes.