Wit's End

A has-been comedian puts makeup on, ready to go out and bounce back into the big time fronting a telethon for a Third World cause. But two armed radicals burst in on him, demanding that he read on air their manifesto (all 101 pages of it!), which exposes comedy as just another form of exploitation in a world still rife with it. The structural DNA of every joke – the thesis, antithesis and new synthesis that brings the punchline laugh – is the feelgood factor that acts as a conditioning effect to accept things as they are, they claim. They’ve got his beloved goat, former stand-up partner, now stuffed, in a props room and threaten damaging it if he won’t comply with exposing comedy as another device for reconciling people to the contradictions and abuse still dominant in the world. This is getting serious. The comedian’s grin stares us out – till it becomes laughable.
(contained - in a dressing room, three characters)