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We here at Beyond the Square
want to challenge what is taboo,
show that people with disability have
a sense of humour
just like everybody else.
I know, shock horror!
Right?
We also want to use humour to highlight
the discriminatory attitudes in
mainstream society.
Over three months, we started on stage,
one of the 'Just a bit funny project'
and set out to find the funny.
Comedian and film maker, Craig Anderson
interviewed people from all across Sydney
who identified as having disability,
about the funny, frustrating and embarrassing
incidents that leave us saying,
"All we can do is laugh!"
I think the first line I ever said on stage was, um,
"Thank you for coming out to support stand up comedy,
or, as we people with cerebral palsy
call it, stagger around comedy."
I'd say, you know give me five
and I'll give you three, ya know.
(Laughter)
Knock, knock
(Ahh, who's there?)
Bear.
(Bear who?)
Bear bum.
You roll into a shop and you literally see
the shop assistants go every which way,
to stay out of your way. (Ha, ha, ha)
Oh, there are two men and they walk into a bar,
(Yeah)
and they come out drunk.
(Oh.)
That's the whole joke.
(Ha ha ha ha!)
I've got aahh, disability parking and I love it,
cause I don't have to pay anything.
(Yes...alright, so what are you saying,
sucked in to everyone else, or?)
Yes, yes.
(Ha ha ha ha!)
She asked me whether I hung out with
other people with cerebral palsy.
She thought there was some sort of
cerebral palsy club.
(And have you ever been abused cause someone
thought you weren't disabled enough?)
Oh yeeesss!
When I remind her of that story she goes bright red.
There was one guy in the brain injury unit
that complained cause he thought he
was on a cruise,
and was really annoyed at the service that
he was getting in the brain injury unit,
cause he though he was on like
Fairstar the fun ship or whatever!
Everyone has different things they find funny
whether it is the absurd,
or things that are out of context,
or physical portrayals
of difference and awkwardness.
Some of these things are culturally acceptable
and reinforced and others are just personal
taste and often down to individual experience.
What makes me, ummm,
laugh.
I like the everyday.
I don't know what funny is
but I know it when I see it.
I love comedy because, comedy is really funny
and I am into comedy.
Some things that you don't even think that
are funny at the time but when you look
back on them you've gotta laugh,
because if you don't laugh then you get angry.
Stupid things.
'Some mothers do hav'em.'
'Mother and Son'.
'Get Smart'.
Remember that show?
That's a funny show, ya know.
Kramer was going out with a very attractive woman
who was a wheelchair user,
who after the third date dumped him,
and he was dumbfounded.
"She dumped me!" (Ha, ha, ha.)
Tripping over.
Comedy is about the underdog,
you laugh at the, like you say
you laugh at the idiot, but,
the skill is that, the idiot has to make the audience
sympathise with them.
Well, I think *** is,
because, *** is the dog
and he's a witness to a crime.
(The dog is a witness to a crime?)
Yes.
Dare I say it, nylon parkers are funny.
They're amusing, ya know, I love the feel,
somehow I see character... in parkers.
It's really weird ya know, like,
now and again I'm a very weird person,
but in a good sense.
(...and that's in the movie "Turner and ***"?)
Yes.
(Right, but, when you do your impersonations
for people, yeah, do they laugh?)
No.
They don't laugh.
(Do you know it could be considered
funny by other people?)
Um, yeah it takes other people to kind of
warm to it or to, ya know,
kind of get the gist of it,
and all that sort of stuff,
but see, I kind of think to myself, if I see
somebody that I know that has an nylon parker
it's like, I often ask myself,
"Gee, I wonder if they realise how nice
their parkers are?"
You now, and things like that or
...its weird I know.
(Look when I see some comedians
they might say "I'm going to do an impersonation
of Arnold Schwarzenegger", yeah.)
Now that I can do, I can do the voice.
(All right... can you say um, "get to the chopper"?)
"I am in the chop-per."
(Yeah)
"I am in the chop-per."
(Ha ha, ok.
I think the line might be, "get to the chopper".)
"Get, get into the chop-per."
"Get in the chopp-a."
(Ok, "get to the chopper".)
"Get to the chop-aahh."
"Get to the chop-aahh."
(Ok, can you say "I'll be back"?)
"I'llllll be baaaaaakkk."
(That's good!)
"Alla la la vista baby!"
(What?)
" Alla la la vista baby."
(I think, it could be, "hasta la vista".)
"Hasta la vista baby."
(laughter in background, ha, ha, ha.)
There are things that we are taught not to laugh at,
or things that are seen as politically incorrect
to find funny, but often humour is used to
combat the tragedies and disabilities
we face in life.
There is an old quote that says, "comedy is just tragedy plus time",
and I think you will soon realise a lot of the stories
we hear in this segment will prove that to be true.
If they laugh at me when I'm, in a conversation
and I get interrupted... agitated.
They laugh, because I tend to stammer and stutter,
they laugh at that,
and I don't find that funny.
I'm somebody with reasonably thick skin.
(yep)
I don't get too upset about anything
otherwise I wouldn't leave the house in the morning.
(Do you think it's a good rule then,
to not laugh at something that someone can't control?)
Yes.
(Cause you can't control your stammering,)
No, I can't.
(and if I laughed at it you would be offended?)
Yes.
(it would be not nice?)
Yes.
(That's a good rule!)
Thank you.
(Do you think that would be a good rule for everything?)
For everyone, yes.
(Right)
For my benefit.
(Haaahhhhh!)
I think we should laugh at absolutely everything.
I don't think anything should be, sort of ehh,
quarantined from laughter.
I think laughter is a wonderful thing.
(Do you agree with that?)
N - O, Not if it hurts anyone.
Sure.
No, absolutely.
Just a few weeks ago I was the MC at a comedy
show, and it wasn't me but one of the other
comedians did a joke that involved cancer,
and, in the audience, this lady, she sort of
screamed out, "Don't you know cancers not funny",
and stormed out, in tears.
I tripped over,
I broke my hand, umm,
(Sorry, and that made you laugh?)
No. That made me cry for a while.
um...it was really painful, but
after a while, yeah,
I met the hottest doctor ever.
Ah, wandered into the props of a plane and lost an arm
back in the 80's.
Well, you know, there are some forms of humour that
pop out a day or two after that
and somebody will say well, "that's a little too soon",
ah well, yeah I was finding that a lot of my humour
was a little too soon for a lot of people. (Ha, ha.)
You kind of just have to take things a little
bit less serious like, I was like,
"aw, ah, um, ah, really struggling to remember"
and my mum was like,
"Oh my god, you'd think you had a brain
injury or something!"
And, because I wasn't hanging out with
other crips anymore, other wheelies in particular
yeah, you might have some darker observations
that once you share them and you got a funny look,
um, from other people going, "ah yeah',
maybe that's something that I better keep
for when I'm in those environments again.
(So, say someone's in a wheelchair,)
Now, I wouldn't laugh at them.
(Why?)
Because it's part of their disability.
(Ok, but,
what if they were in a wheelchair and they
were doing funny things for you to laugh at?)
Then I would laugh at them.
(You would laugh at them.)
So, I've never been in a darker environment
than rehab.
Um, there's a lot of stuff on the inside that's very
politically incorrect.
When you're in company of people who have disabilities
and there is a shared humour,
it really reinforces the humanity of everybody
around, and completely overrides any sense
of disability that there might be.
We all know how important having a sense of
humour is in dealing with the stresses of
daily life, but when you have a disability it
is even more crucial in coping with the mundane,
because we face many ridiculous scenarios
and challenges.
They see me walking on stage.
I'm well aware, that every person in the audience
is going, "What's wrong with that guy?
Why does he walk like that?"
And, it's one of the first things that I have to address
because, otherwise people aren't gonna be laughing,
they're gonna be wondering, what's wrong with me.
I laugh at myself.
It's always good to just you know,
divvy something up with humour and light heartedness.
I used to be very paranoid when I used to get
on trains and things like that.
I swear that people were laughing at me, ya know,
but it just turned out that I had schizophrenia.
People like me get bullied, ya know,
and I just thought no one's gonna bully me
if I can make them laugh.
If we see the funny side of things,
and if I can help Georgia see the funny
side of things, and she does the same for me,
you know, we get over our problems a lot better.
And you want to make sure that people are engaging
and listening to what the works about
and humour's a great way to break through some of that.
You know, I have cerebral palsy and when you have
cerebral palsy you get a lot of different reactions
from people.
Like for instance, when I first meet women,
they say to me,
"How did you get into my bedroom?"
(breaks into laughter behind camera)
I was over in the US quite a few years ago now
and kept talking about the fact that in Australia
people with disability are given electric chairs
and um, all of a sudden I could see some quite
serious looks, (laughter) on people's faces
and I realised I was here in the Southern states
where the electric chair is given quite often,
and ever since then I changed my,
I used the words, "I'm now a power wheelchair user".
I use comedy because sometimes people don't
know how to take it,
they don't know how to be, if you say you've got
a disability, and you've gotta say like,
"you don't have to become all, oh my god, I better
not say that" or, it's like dude,
I'm still human you know.
I think people don't expect you to be able
to laugh at yourself.
I use humour with my disabilities as a
kind of like, a coping sort of mechanism.
(Do you think you know when someone's laughing to be polite?)
Yes.
(Yeah?)
Yes.
I was trying to be funny, I was like trying to
um, get the guys attention, and I can't remember exactly
what I was doing, but I was kind of using my
disability to try and get some attention.
And, anyway, one of the older guys he kind of dragged me,
well he didn't drag me, he pulled me aside and said,
"Rob, you know, you're making yourself look stupid,
ya know, your behaviour is not, look they're not
laughing with you, they're laughing at you.
(Ok, I'm gonna do two different laughs,
Ok
you tell me if I'm being polite or if I'm laughing for real?)
Alright.
(Ok, this is, no no, you tell me which one,
here's number one, ha ha ha ha.)
That's real!
(Ok, number two,)
yes,
(ah, ah, ha, ah,)
That's polite!
(That's being polite? Alright, very good!)
Just one minute laughing or smiling
you'll be, you'll feel better.
I think it's true.
People with disability are prone to being snickered at
or called names to give other people a laugh.
Every time I go out in public,
I have to brace myself to be talked to like I have
no intelligence.
I am not inspirational though, I am just trying to live
my life the best way I know how.
That is, with a good sense of humour...well,
a great sense of humour, if you ask me!
Well people can talk down to Georgia
and they can also put on a special voice.
What, ha, ha, ha, ha... me?
Good things come out of,
no bad things come out of,
no, good things come out of bad things.
Kids if you happen to find two fingers,
chances are they're probably mine!
(laughter)
Here's one man, says to another man,
"Don't look at me, I just got here first".
(Hang on.)
That's a joke.
(Kind of)
This one man said to another man,
Oh forget it!
This one man said to another man,
"Don't ask me, I'm just standing there."
(See that's kind of like, you've started a joke
and then someone comes in to find out about
the joke and they don't know what the joke is.)
Yes.
(Yeah)
(Is that the joke?)
Yes.
(laughter)
"Why ask me I'm just standing there."
(But what is he asking?)
(Ha, it's kinda like a paradox, cause no one has
asked a question.)
No.
Who are the men?
No, no, no, no, no, um...
Do you know Lucille Ball?
(Yes)
The one who plays as um Lucy,
yes
in the Lucille show?
(Yes)
She tells that joke.
(She tells that joke?)
She tells that joke.
(Does someone come in and ask Lucy
a question?)
Well um, she meets George Burns and she tells
that joke.
(With George Burns?)
Yes.
(Does George Burns come in and say,
"Hey Lucy, what am I doin here?")
No.
(No, what does he say?
What does George Burns say?)
I have no idea.
No idea.
(Do you tell that joke to many people?)
No.
(Yes)
(That's probably a good idea.)