Comedy School

Our first deep dive as Star-Splitters was into the history of comedy. We studied three main theories of laughter, dating from Plato and Hobbes and Bergson, saw how those theories intersected with strains of political/social/philosophical thought such as the ideal republic, the social contract theory, and the rise of mechanization in the Industrial Age, and applied those theories to Shakespeare and Mr. Bean and Chaplin and Keaton and Lucille Ball and the Gadsden Purchase sketch on Fallon. We read Aristophones' The Clouds and felt the sting of satire, even as we saw the roots of stand-up. We studied the laughter of other social animals.