Our friends at the Centre for Comedy Studies (CCSR), Brunel University London, will be hosting an event on Friday 21st November featuring our very own Funny Women Players and Funny Women founder, Lynne Parker, as part of ‘Being Human’, the UK’s first national festival of the humanities.
Between 15th and 23rd November 2014, the festival will engage people from across the UK with innovative research. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, the festival will draw together a programme of activities to inform, extend, and ignite contemporary thinking and imagination. Over 35 research institutions are set to participate in the 2014 festival, from Truro to Orkney, Swansea to Belfast, Norwich to Liverpool. They will be celebrating the breadth and diversity of the humanities in a series of events held in museums, galleries and cultural and community centres … even caves!
No caves for us, sadly! Instead Dr Sharon Lockyer, director of the CCSR at Brunel University, has asked us to help her reflect on the importance of humour as a core aspect of being human, and how academics in the humanities are beginning to research this significance in the emerging field of humour studies. This research has inspired ‘Feeling Funny, Being Human – What can humour tell us about being human?’ which takes place at Brunel’s Antonin Artaud Theatre on Friday 21st November.
This event will explore these questions from a number of different engaging perspectives. There will be will be opportunity to use The Joking Computer, software that can build millions of jokes, improv from the Funny Women Players based on suggestions from the audience on the topic of humour and ‘being human’, and lively panel discussions.
Other speakers include: Dr Merideth Gattis (School of Psychology, Cardiff University); Max Kinnings (Head of Creative Writing, Brunel University, novelist and screenwriter); Dr Brett Mills (Film and Television Studies, University of East Anglia); and Dr Graeme Ritchie (Department of Computing Science, University of Aberdeen).
“Any attempt at being humorous depends on a number of important factors," explains Dr Sharon Lockyer. “These include the content of the humorous remark/story/action, the relationship between the creator and the audience, and the context.
“Humour can bring people together, aid our interactions and reduce social boundaries, but it can also be divisive, make us feel uncomfortable and create boundaries between individuals, groups and societies. Although universal in human experience, how humour operates and is sanctioned, is socially, culturally, spatially and temporally specific. Therefore understanding how, why, when, where and what we find humorous can provide interesting insights into others and ourselves.”
The event is free and booking is required. Follow festival progress on Twitter @BeingHumanFest
This event is led by: Brunel University in partnership with: University of Cardiff, University of Aberdeen, University of East Anglia, Funny Women.
For more information click here!
Pictured: Dr Sharon Lockyer
