When Monty Python’s Life of Brian arrived on Netflix in April 2018, a controversial piece of cinema history returned to public prominence. A film which treated religious themes with an indecorous irreverence that some Christians found unpalatable was introduced to the…
Peter Berger, Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience, 2nd ed. New York: Walter De Gruyter, 2014. 201 pp. £22.99 Fittingly, the title of Peter Berger’s valuable little book on comedy contains a polite pun. The first two words…
Michael Wheeler, St John and the Victorians, Cambridge University Press, 2014, 286 pps., $44.99 / £30.82 This is a fun book. Lurking behind profound scholarship and deep knowledge of a vast array of literature, ranging from poems through hymns to…
Jake Martin, SJ. What’s So Funny about Faith?: A Memoir from the Intersection of Hilarious and Holy. Chicago: Loyola Press, 2012, 161 pp., £11.50 paper. James Martin, SJ. Between Heaven and Mirth: Why Joy, Humor, and Laughter Are at the Heart of the…
The Good Book tells us that when the Lord comes, “The lame shall be humorous again!” Actually, it’s “leap like the deer” (Is. 35:6), but that’s only useful if you’re trying out for the Olympics or escaping from prison. A…
‘I do not like seriousness. I think it is irreligious. The man who takes everything seriously is the man who makes an idol of everything: he bows down to wood and stone until his limbs are as rooted as the…
It was Saturday evening. I was set to perform a sketch at the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) meeting straight after the visiting preacher had finished his talk—a talk which turned out to be the most intensely serious sermon ever…
In improvisational comedy there are a set of unwritten rules which serve as guidelines for creating successful scene work. Some of these rules include: don’t ask questions, give yourself something to do on stage (a mimed activity of some sort),…
Today is Red Nose Day in the UK—a 25-year-long tradition of using comedy to raise funds for a variety of charities both in the UK and throughout Africa. At first blush it may seem inappropriate for some to be laughing…