https:\/\/mail.google.com\/mail\/u\/0\/?tab=wm#inbox\/FMfcgxwHMGLRPzbgnsswfcXKTXjNhJNw?projector=1&messagePartId=0.1<\/a><\/p>\nOr you can read the article as pasted below. I would encourage you to do so. It takes huge progressive leaps in reducing stigma and gives us entirely new ways of looking at vulnerability as a positive. He should be commended for this work and I\u2019m delighted to know he plans to continue his research towards releasing a completed book on the subject.<\/p>\n
Persona Studies 2019, vol. 5, no. 2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nSTAGE PERSONA, STAND-UP COMEDY AND MENTAL HEALTH: \u2018PUTTING YOURSELF OUT THERE\u2019\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nM<\/span>ATT <\/span>H<\/span>ARGRAVE\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nA<\/span>BSTRACT\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis article addresses the subject of stand-up and mental health through the prism of comic persona, generating new, non-diagnostic discourses around mental illness. The article focuses on British and Australian comedians whose material addresses conditions such as bipolar disorder (John Scott), depression and anxiety (Seymour Mace; Lauren Pattison; Felicity Ward), or feigns the staging of mental collapse (Stewart Lee). Based on the analysis of live events and one-on-one interviews, the essay considers the role that persona plays in mediating the relationship between the comedian and their material, arguing that shaping persona is key to developing practices framed within a poetics of vulnerability.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nK<\/span>EY <\/span>W<\/span>ORDS\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nVulnerability; Role; Comedy; Mental Health; Stigma; Performance\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI<\/span>NTRODUCING PERSONA<\/span>, <\/span>STAND<\/span>\u2013<\/span>UP<\/span>, <\/span>AND MENTAL HEALTH\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nOne of the first tasks of the stand-up comedian on their stage entrance is to amplify their voice, usually by means of a microphone. At the same time, they must attempt something more complex but no less vital: to amplify their subjectivity by means of persona. My use of persona references Erving Goffman\u2019s definition: the \u201cimplicit or explicit claim\u201d that a social being makes \u201cto be a person of a particular kind\u201d (1959, p. 24); in this case a distilled, or exaggerated, essence of themselves, embodied on stage, which becomes the vehicle for their comedy. Several authors (Brodie; Double; Frances-White & Shandur; Ince; Quirk) have stressed the importance of persona in comedy, between them providing the basis for a critical framework. First, the comic\u2019s persona must be highly subjective and quickly signal their unique perspective on the world. This becomes particularly apparent in club nights featuring four or five comedians. In a short time, the stand-up must convince the audience of <\/span>who they are, <\/span><\/i>a process which is mirrored in Chris Rock\u2019s joke: \u201cWhen you meet somebody for the first time, you\u2019re not meeting them, you\u2019re meeting their representative\u201d (Rock 1999)<\/span>.<\/span><\/i>i <\/span>Secondly, subjectivity must be maintained consistently: most comics will not move from surreal flights of fancy to politcal gags, or from physical clowning to confessional depth, unless they address this tonal shift as an integral part of their act. As Robin Ince explains, \u201cAn audience need to know what they believe they are dealing with \u2013 the universe they occupy must be defined\u201c (2018a, p. 126). For Ince, the authenticity of who he is on-stage would be undermined if he could not meet people \u2018as himself\u2019 off-stage after the performance (2018b).<\/span>ii <\/span>Thirdly, the persona of many stand-ups will convey not just a specific point of view but a socially marginal one. As folklorist Ian Brodie points out, \u201cmarginalisation is a subjective framework created by the performer in collusion with the\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n67\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHargrave\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\naudience\u201c (2014, p. 104). One of the ways a marginalised framework might be created is when a comedian openly declares mental distress, which is itself the playing out of a stigmatised social identity. <\/span>The symbiotic relationship between comedy and mental health is an open secret that, <\/span>until recently, few have considered more than common fact. The \u2018tears of a clown\u2019 and\/or suicidal comedian are cultural clich\u00e9s and can be summarised in the Groucho Marx joke: A man goes to an analyst and says he has lost the will to live. The doctor says, \u201cWhy not go to the circus to see Grock, the world\u2019s funniest clown. I\u2019m sure you will be much happier\u201d. The man says, \u201cI am Grock\u201d (qtd in Kanfer 2001 p. 432). It is a cultural trope that the desire to perform stand-up comedy is itself evidence of a mental health problem. Judd Apatow\u2019s book of conversations with fellow comedians, for example, is called <\/span>Sick in the Head <\/span><\/i>(2015). \u201cWhen someone is laughing\u201d, Apatow explains, \u201cI know they don\u2019t dislike me \u2026 I \u2026 need \u2026 constant approval\u201d (qtd in Maron & McDonald 2017, p. 237).<\/span>iii <\/span>The point is reinforced by the late Robin Williams:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHow desperately insecure we are that made us do this for a living \u2026 you get to do stuff, where if you did it in the street people go: \u2018That man! He talked about his penis! To me openly!\u2019 And you do it in a club, suddenly there\u2019s this license to thrill \u2026 You\u2019re this weird insecure guy who does this looking, like Lenny Bruce said, looking for love. Do you love me? Temporarily? Kind of? I don\u2019t care if you love me, I gotta say this shit. Is that an artist or is that a sociopath? Or a psychopath? \u2026 Well I\u2019m not going to label him! (Maron 2010)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWilliams\u2019 positioning of himself as outsider is part of what Brodie means by \u201cthe vernacular theory of comedy\u201d which views the comedian as a social type differentiated as \u201cmarginalized \u2026 rooted in loneliness and the need for approval \u2026 seeing the world from a different perspective\u201d (2014, p. 104). The sense that there is something \u2018wrong\u2019 with comedians has led to medical studies that seek to uncover apparent psychotic traits: psychological profiling via online tests indicate that \u201cperception aberration\u201d (paranormal or magical thinking); \u201ccognitive disorganisation\u201d; \u201canhedonia\u201d (inability to feel pleasurable emotions); and impulsive risk taking are all disproportionately found to be traits of stand-ups (Ando et al. 2014).<\/span>iv\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIn this essay, I address the under-researched issue of comedy and mental health through the prism of comic persona. I do not diagnose comedians, rather I seek to analyse the vivid contribution that stand-ups make to understanding vulnerable states of mind. I focus on British and Australian comedians whose material addresses conditions such as bipolar disorder (John Scott), depression and anxiety (Seymour Mace; Lauren Pattison; Felicity Ward), or feigns the staging of mental collapse (Stewart Lee). Based on analysis of live events and one-on-one interviews, I consider the role that persona plays in mediating the relationship between comedian and material or between comedian and audience. I suggest that there are at least five ways that persona operates in this context: as a protective device which allows the performer to share vulnerabilities (Scott); as an interruption of an established identity which allows the voicing of revelations (Pattison); as a theatrical conceit which troubles the notion of fixed identity (Lee); as an emotional distancing effect (Ward); and as a way of articulating a sense of belonging (Mace). I am not suggesting that such persona transactions are purely technical devices that can be picked off the shelf by the next aspiring comedian: they are deeply embedded in each individual and work in specific ways. Nor do I intend to be patronising or reductive about a complex performance dynamic. I argue that by describing and analysing the <\/span>affect <\/span><\/i>of persona, it is possible to understand the importance and subtlety of self-presentation as <\/span>one component <\/span><\/i>in conveying complex subject matter. The analysis of stand-up and persona, I assert, can make an original and important contribution to the fields of persona studies and to the emerging field of performance and mental health. Such analysis dismantles reductive\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n68\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPersona Studies 2019, vol. 5, no. 2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nbinaries (well\/sick; sane\/insane; happy\/suffering) and leads to more productive ways of thinking: not to administer or medicate, but to illuminate the subjective experience of stigmatised states of being. \u2018Mental health\u2019, in so far as it means anything, is the capacity to develop \u2013 and cope with having \u2013 a self. \u2018Mental health\u2019 is embedded in the craft of stand-up since the form places high demands on the individual practitioner\u2019s ability to negotiate this self aesthetically and publicly.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMy essay is underpinned by the philosophical work of Erinn Gilson, who argues that vulnerability is an increasingly urgent issue in the neoliberal era, in which the prevailing mode of selfhood is \u2018entrepreneurial subjectivity\u2019 that promotes competitive self-seeking as the only rational choice. Gilson\u2019s <\/span>Ethics of Vulnerability <\/span><\/i>(2014) explores the implications of three assertions: first, that the normative equivalence of vulnerability with weakness devalues vulnerability as something socially \u2018bad\u2019; second, that vulnerability can be viewed as an ethical resource that helps manifest virtues of empathy and compassion; and third, that vulnerability is often wrongly reduced to a state of perpetual risk, as opposed to an ambiguous, multifaceted, and productive experience, full of human potential. I argue that stand-up, as an artistic and social platform, provides a unique place to observe vulnerability at work and offers a critique of the entrepreneurial self. Like Gilson, I question why vulnerability is overwhelmingly equated with socially undesirable indicators such as weakness and risk. I argue that vulnerability is an aesthetic and social resource to be explored and celebrated. I take this theme forward here, echoing comedian Phil Jupitus:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve always had this belief that you have to have something wrong with you to want to do stand-up, because it is putting yourself (particularly as a performer) in possibly the most vulnerable position you can be in, aside from people who fuck each other in Amsterdam for money \u2026 I think it\u2019s really baring and putting yourself out there. (qtd in Double 2013, p. 129)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe craft of stand-up involves a dual decision: not only the choice to put your \u2018self\u2019 out there but also which \u2018self\u2019 to send as representative.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nP<\/span>ERSONA AS SHIELD<\/span>: J<\/span>OHN <\/span>S<\/span>COTT<\/span>\u2019<\/span>S CREATIVE RECOVERY\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe first category of comic persona is that of protective shield: a mode of address which allows the comic to choose those parts of him- or herself that they will allow public scrutiny. It permits the voicing of vulnerabilities that would otherwise be too painful to share. Scottish comedian John Scott has, in his own words, had \u201cnineteen years\u2019 experience as a comedian and twenty-four years\u2019 experience as a mental health service user\u201d. Furthermore, he says: \u201cI don\u2019t think comedians statistically experience mental health issues any more than the general public at large. It\u2019s just that you hear them talk about it\u201d (Scott 2019). Scott points out in his 2017 show <\/span>Delusions <\/span><\/i>that the relationship between his psychiatric self and his comic self has always privately, if rarely publicly, intertwined:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe unusual thing about me I suppose is it was actually becoming a comedian that got the right diagnosis. When I started out in comedy I was without treatment. A doctor took sympathy on me and also doubted my diagnosis so we had a wee experiment with going meds free. So after six weeks I went back to see the doctor. How are you doing meds free? she asked. AWESOME I said, I\u2019VE BECOME A COMEDIAN. She went, Oh no \u2026 I was worried about something like this happening \u2026 At one point I visited the local GP because my condition was acting up, and he didn\u2019t believe I was a comedian. He actually thought I was being delusional again. You might be thinking the same. (Scott 2017)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n69\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHargrave\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nDelusions <\/span><\/i>was the first time Scott had \u2018come out\u2019 as having a history of acute mental health difficulties. Utilising a punchline-rich political satire, the show presents his own struggle with bipolar disorder in conjunction with, and possibly as a manifestation of, the current world- political order. Scott deploys the constant interruptive dissonance between his own narrative journey through the mental health system and wider geo-political chaos. The show is a narrative of how he was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia as a young man and the difficult process of having this diagnosis overturned to bipolar disorder, for which he now, by his own admission, receives successful treatment. The show <\/span>Delusions <\/span><\/i>is both memoir and educative tool. Scott\u2019s message is one of creative recovery:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s been a lot said about anxiety and depression but this show looks at the more acute end of mental health and is about the period in my life when I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. Don\u2019t worry I got better \u2026 but I wouldn\u2019t want to catch it again. (Scott 2017)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nScott\u2019s on-stage persona is not far from his everyday self: affable, good humoured, sharing of enthusiasms. The lines above, early in the show, demonstrate how far he is at pains to put the audience at ease, to acknowledge the potential for discomfort and to gently put it to rest. As he said in interview:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI\u2019ve never exposed myself like this as a comedian. I felt very vulnerable doing this, now I feel empowered by it. Vulnerability in stand-up comedy is really when you\u2019re talking about very personal material. It\u2019s not just whether they are going to laugh at this, it\u2019s how they are going to take me as a person because of this \u2026 It\u2019s probably the most out of my comfort zone space I\u2019ve ever been as a comedian \u2026 Rather than saying \u2018I\u2019m weak, I\u2019m vulnerable\u2019 I\u2019m using the defence of laughter as a barricade, as a shield, but that is my job as a stand-up. (Scott 2019)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPerhaps the most affecting moments in his routine, and some of the funniest, are when Scott tells how others around him were implicated in the diagnostic journey from schizophrenia to bipolar. After an involved description of the events leading to the over-turning of his first diagnosis, his then girlfriend is consistently referenced as a supportive other: \u201cI should also mention I no longer have that girlfriend in these stories any more \u2026 Now she\u2019s my wife\u201d (Scott 2017). As Scott explained:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMy wife is pivotal [in the show]: helping me get the treatment. When I first spoke of this and I talked about her \u2013 it hit me \u2013 I became very emotional how hard it had been for both of us. So I checked myself and tried to write in a way that wouldn\u2019t make me emotional. I was very conscious. I could have made it more sentimental but I wanted to keep it to just for laugh. I don\u2019t want people getting weepy. (Scott 2019)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThis is an important principle of what I refer to as a poetics of vulnerability: that vulnerability avows structural support. I argue that Scott\u2019s work, like others discussed here, extends Gilson\u2019s idea of vulnerability as a productive human state: it is an aesthetic \u2013 and comedic \u2013 resource, which has not thus far been properly understood. <\/span>Delusions <\/span><\/i>upsets the notion of the self as autonomous entity: Scott\u2019s journey is an implicit critique of the ideology of what Gilson terms \u2018entrepreneurial subjectivity\u2019, the now prevalent mode of citizenship which promotes competitive self-seeking. What comes across clearly in his material is the care and attention of a range of psychiatrists and a loving partner who supported Scott to attain his current equilibrium. <\/span>Delusions <\/span><\/i>then<\/span>, <\/span><\/i>despite being a solo performance, to borrow from Shannon Jackson, \u201cforegrounds performance as a series of supporting relations\u201d (2011, p. 42). This is\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n70\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPersona Studies 2019, vol. 5, no. 2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nechoed in two iterations of the performance I have seen where Scott openly refers to written material on the stage floor. He makes no secret that this work is \u2018supported\u2019 by written material and occasionally allows us to see the written mechanism that comics often keep hidden.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nScott\u2019s psychiatric condition, bipolar disorder, is, one might argue, <\/span>already personified<\/span><\/i>. Psychoanalyst Darian Leader states that bipolar disorder often involves the \u201ccreation of a new persona, as if one were someone else\u201d (2013, p. 15), which he associates with the role of \u201cthe night club entertainer who has to keep his audience focused on himself at all times\u201d (2013, p. 25). Is it \u201cany accident\u201d, Leader asks, \u201cthat manic depression is so common in the world of comedians?\u201d (2013, p. 25). For Leader, the \u2018signature motifs\u2019 of bipolar, during high periods, correlate with stand-up: the flight of ideas; the sense of a special connectedness between things; compulsions and increased appetites; a tendency to create categorical distinctions between good and bad; and the need for an audience. Such correlations have been questioned by comedian Sarah Pascoe:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nIt is tempting to say \u201cYES, that is what comedians are like, we are not normal, we are so special and creative, QUICKLY put us in the attic and get remarried!\u201d But we\u2019re not that interesting. Very little of what we do is inspired. We work hard on sculpting our routines. Through nightly practice. What remains in a set and what gets cut is mostly decided by the audience, whose reactions are essential within the creative process. Are they psychotic too? (Pascoe 2014)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThese comments reflect what psychoanalyst Adam Phillips views as the problem of both <\/span>undervaluing <\/span><\/i>so-called mental illness \u2013 disciplining it through normative rules \u2013 and <\/span>over- valuing <\/span><\/i>it \u2013 idealising or romanticising those who have \u2018it\u2019 and convey some essential truth (Phillips 2012, p. 197). I do not want to reinforce a binary opposition between \u2018the nightly grafter\u2019 and the \u2018gifted psychotic\u2019. I simply suggest that there is a <\/span>formal synergy <\/span><\/i>between the art of stand-up and the clinical label of bipolar, as it is defined by Leader. Both \u2018forms\u2019 share a hyper-connectivity; a propensity for word-play and punning; and the need to keep the language flowing: \u201cManic discourse freezes the listener; speaking keeps the other person there \u2026 The listener will often feel manipulated or controlled\u201d (Leader 2013, p. 25). Stand-up is manic speech formalised: the underlying rule that makes stand-up work is that what appears to be dialogue is always one with a silent interlocutor. As comedian Dylan Moran observes: \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re having a conversation with the other person, but you\u2019re having to work it out for both of you\u201d (Maron 2012). Any disturbance in this formal contract, heckling for example, is an exception that proves the rule: it is disruption that must be suppressed to make way for continued monologue.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nP<\/span>ERSONA INTERRUPTED<\/span>: L<\/span>AUREN <\/span>P<\/span>ATTISON<\/span>\u2019<\/span>S <\/span>\u201c<\/span>SHIT TONNE OF LAYERS<\/span>\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe second category of persona in relationship to comedy and mental health I refer to as \u2018interruptive\u2019 because it splits and refocuses an established persona in order to voice another more layered truth. Perhaps the most shocking example \u2013 and at the time of writing, most influential in the comedy industry \u2013 is the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby\u2019s 2017 work <\/span>Nanette<\/span><\/i>, which broke with her habitual persona and has become a touchstone for a re- examination not just of mental health but of the formal conventions of stand-up. These, Gadsby argues, perpetuate harmful tropes of self-degradation and gender violence and make audience and performer complicit in the diminishment of personal suffering through self-deprecation. Mary Luckhurst\u2019s detailed essay on Gadsby in this issue can be read both in its own right and as a kind of parallax to this analysis. A comedienne at an earlier point in her career is Newcastle- born Lauren Pattison, who has enjoyed rapid success over the last two years, with shows <\/span>Lady\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n71\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHargrave\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nMuck <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>Peachy<\/span><\/i>. Pattison\u2019s comic persona plays with her identity as a young woman, recently graduated, who finds herself in a world which jars with her working-class roots. She references her appearance as \u2018cute\u2019 like a baby or a kitten; is self-deprecating about her ability to find suitable relationships; and much of her comedy derives from her class position as the underdog in most relationship and social situations. This persona works itself through the two shows: the first is a break-up narrative, the second a redemption tale of new love and new adventures, touring comedy in Australia. Pattison\u2019s child-adult status is consistently deployed through references to her mum, and the sense that Lauren is vulnerable and in need of being looked after. Pattison willingly delves into the underlying anxieties which underpin her success. Two thirds into <\/span>Peachy<\/span><\/i>, Pattison moves seamlessly into the following monologue, which occurs after her new boyfriend has bought her a gift, which demonstrates how much he has listened to her, not something she is used to:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI find it quite hard to get people to listen. If I want to get people to listen to me I have to charge you \u00a310, put on some sequins and scream into a microphone [<\/span>big laugh<\/span><\/i>] that\u2019s how I do it [<\/span>as laughter fades<\/span><\/i>] \u2026 \u2018Comedy Lauren\u2019, everyone <\/span>cares <\/span><\/i>what Comedy Lauren\u2019s got to say. \u2018Normal Lauren\u2019: nobody gives a fuck. No one gives a shit. I can put a joke on Facebook and it\u2019ll get few hundred likes \u2018cause I\u2019m fucking hilarious. I can ask for someone to go for a coffee with me and no one will reply. No one gives a shit about the real me. Everyone just cares about that version of me: the on-stage me, the comedy one, that\u2019s who people want to know, and I can\u2019t be that person all the time. I\u2019m not that person all the time. So this was the first time that someone cared about me, Normal Lauren, who puts on a shit tonne of layers, just to make someone laugh. That\u2019s who someone cared about. (Pattison 2018)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nWhen I saw this show live, the immediate impact of these words was incredibly powerful. It was as if someone was literally taking off the mask she had maintained up to this point and trying on another. <\/span>Pattison\u2019s reference to the \u201cshit tonne of layers\u201d is a call back to an earlier routine where <\/span>she literally dresses herself in an absurd number of clothing layers, awaiting her boyfriend\u2019s arrival. Yet, it also echoes the psychological layering happening in the moment: that what we see on stage is a layered, constructed persona. Perhaps the correlation between the sartorial and the psychological is accidental but Pattison\u2019s work is so carefully written and constructed that this seems unlikely. In its way, it is a direct challenge to the audience, as if she is saying: I\u2019m not <\/span>just <\/span><\/i>a clown, I\u2019m not <\/span>just <\/span><\/i>what you can see, I\u2019m a whole other person besides this. This on-stage revelation echoes John Limon\u2019s central thesis that stand-up\u2019s true subject is always abjection: abjection as an abasement and a prostration before the audience; but also abjection as a way to describe \u201csomething miring your life, some skin that cannot be sloughed off, some role \u2026 that has become your only character\u201d (2000, p. 4). Perhaps in this case not the <\/span>only <\/span><\/i>character, but a character that has suddenly given Pattison a degree of fame and hard-won recognition that would be difficult to give up. It is as if Pattison, like Batman\u2019s enemy, Bane, has found a true purpose through a mask. As Bane in <\/span>The Dark Knight Rises <\/span><\/i>says of his position: \u201cNo one cared who I was till I put on the mask\u201d (Nolan & Nolan, p.3)Bane\u2019s survival, and perhaps that of some comedians, is dependent on the putting on of a persona.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPattison\u2019s work also underlines Alain Ehrenberg\u2019s thesis that \u201cdepression \u2026 serves as a canvas upon which to sketch out the changes in modern subjectivity, the displacement of the hard task of being healthy\u201d (2016, p. 232). Ehrenberg asserts that depression is an endemic contemporary phenomenon, one which reflects the weariness of the postmodern subject, who must undertake the daily labour of self-definition. I argue that stand-up is a particular kind of\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n72\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nPersona Studies 2019, vol. 5, no. 2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nself-definitional labour, one that reflects \u2013 via persona \u2013 what it means to live in a world of perpetual, self-monitoring choices. Pattison, in <\/span>Peachy<\/span><\/i>, has achieved the success she desired and been given new choices: international travel, awards, independence. Yet this choice, this sovereignty of the individual, as Ehrenberg terms it, leads to insecurity and the inability to act. Depression is the opposite of the desired social norm: future-orientated, goal-driven, autonomous, proactive, and invulnerable. Pattison, in her portrait of the artist as a young depressive, offers, like several other comics analysed here, a counter-discourse, one that gives voice to depressive subjectivity. This subjectivity is, as Nietzsche once asserted, a complaint: \u201cThere is one small dose of revenge in every complaint\u201d, he said, which \u201ccan give life spice and make it endurable\u201d (qtd in Ehrenberg 2016, p. xiii). There is an anger in Pattison\u2019s words at this point in the show, a reproach, not just to the world at large but to the audience. It is this act of anger that seeks to make the most direct connection. Yet it also hints at the fleeting nature of this connection. It is a statement of rage at one human being\u2019s incapacity to connect beyond the level of the joke.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nP<\/span>ERSONA AS THEATRICAL CONCEIT<\/span>: S<\/span>TEWART <\/span>L<\/span>EE AND THE GHOSTS OF DEAD COMEDIANS\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nStewart Lee, who has increasingly had to reinvent his marginalisation because of his commercial success, is an example of the use of persona as theatrical conceit which troubles the notion of a fixed or authentic identity. Deploying a faux-arrogant persona, aggrandising mania coupled with despair, Lee has defined his creative process in part thus:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLike a lot of stand-ups I try to write in the rhythm and cadences of someone who has cornered you in a bar or a train carriage, continues drinking steadily and determinedly over a two hour period, grows increasingly agitated and unhappy whilst holding forth on a series of subjects he really knows little about; and in so doing, inadvertently reveals some great truth and\/or the real things that are driving him to despair. (Lee 2013)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLee is underlining an important issue: that comic persona is constructed, intimate and vernacular, and often implies deep-rooted distress. If \u2018agitation\u2019, \u2018despair\u2019, and \u2018unhappiness\u2019, not to mention alcohol and other self-cures, are often part of the dramaturgy of stand-up <\/span>per se<\/span><\/i>, might this not make stand-up a form <\/span>a priori <\/span><\/i>equipped to explore mental distress? Some readers may find the inclusion of Lee in this discussion surprising. I am, for the most part, analysing the work of stand-ups who declare a clinically specific mental health issue. Lee does not. But some of his routines have led certain audience members and critics to believe that he has:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI was in Dublin and I did a long bit about thinking I\u2019m being haunted by the ghosts of comedians who have killed themselves. It goes on for ages and people buy into it. I\u2019ve had people in the front row going, \u201cCan you see them? Are they around you?\u201d Anyway, a woman in the front row got her camera out and took a photo. So I went, \u201cWhy would you do that? Why would you take a photo of someone remembering people they know who have taken their own lives?\u201d Then she crept out \u2026. she\u2019s a journalist \u2026 and she\u2019s tweeted: \u201cI\u2019ve just seen Stewart Lee have a mental breakdown on stage thinking that ghosts are attacking him.\u201d She bought into it to the point where she thought she\u2019d got a scoop that I\u2019d gone nuts. (Lee 2013)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe routine which, which eventually appeared in <\/span>Stewart Lee\u2019s Comedy Vehicle <\/span><\/i>