Behind the stand-up comedians at the National Arts Festival
The men and women who make us roar with laughter are themselves mustering a lot of courage
There are so many comedians at the National Arts Festival that if you sat down for every second stand-up, you’d still need to be a dozen people to see half of them. I watched only four shows as a way of gauging what people are finding funny, so I’m fully aware that I’ll be leaving out a lot of worthy names. But for the sake of being able to eat a meal once in a while and also maybe catch some jazz, I’ll only be responding to the sets I saw by Tats Nkonzo, Dylan Moran, Claudine Ullman and Rob van Vuuren.
Van Vuuren says he sees the court jester of earlier times as the first stand-up. This was a role permitting tricksters to speak truth to power. A joker could get away with saying anything because it was all in the guise of fun. “Comedy that has an element of truth in it hits home the hardest.” Van Vuuren sees stand-up as a way of “calling bull... on the status quo … pulling the veil away.”..
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