Afraid of Offense

So many stories that are fun to hear and tell poke fun at somebody. Often I'm the butt of my own jokes, but sometimes it's strangers or close loved ones or friends. It's healthy for us all to laugh, and making someone break into smile is one of my favorite things to do, but where do our senses of humor cross? Usually there's some common ground and some jokes mean completely different things to people. You toss a joke like a ball and there's not always someone to catch it. What's a football to one person is a hot potato to another, or a cactus, or a fire, or maybe some people always fumble and can't take a joke at all.

That's where the stage is easier than typing in blogs or pen and paper. As an actor, there are a few veils of separation... the character, the director, the rest of the actors and even the audience add an extra lenses of interpretation. Actors can literally see the audience in front of them, or if they can't and are blinded by the lights, they know they are there. They can hear their reactions. I guess nowadays with iPhones and easy access recording equipment even a quick informal live performances can exist past curtain call, but there's a formality and form to theater that suggests parody or puts a performance's content into a context of other people's laughter, tears and silence.

Writing. There are so many potential stories, but some of them burn. Ourselves and others. Maybe immediately, maybe ten years later, maybe never.

It's the risk performers, writers, and humans in general take when we chose to share jokes and stories with the people outside of ourselves, but it's also what makes life worthwhile. Jokes don't always land well and conversations can come back to haunt us, but what would life be like without stories to share?

Like Samuel Beckett said, "Fail again. Fail better."