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Making a living as a professional comedian is a brutally difficult job: You’ve gotta stand before strangers and make them laugh. Over and over again. Getting in a room full of strangers and giving a regular speech is intimidating enough; good luck being so creative and original that you also bowl them over with laughter.
If you’re a professional comedian performing at a comedy club, not only must you out-funny the guy next to you, but you’re also competing against George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Sam Kinison, and Chris Rock. If someone’s a big enough comedy fan to patronize a comedy club, it’s highly probable they’ve already sampled the greatest hits of the greatest comedians of all time. No worries, you can be funnier than Carlin and Pryor, right?
Good luck with that.
Now, imagine all of the above, but with one important caveat: You have to perform in front of strangers and make them laugh uproariously… without saying a word.
It sounds impossible, but a few comedians have pulled it off. In the early days of cinema, movies were silent, so it was a necessity. “Silent Comedy” superstars like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Laurel and Hardy relied on sight-gags and physical comedy to tickle your funny bone. Even after the advent of “talkies,” comic actors like Benny Hill performed some of their most beloved sketches without any dialogue. It turns out you don’t need words to generate the guffaws. Funny is funny.
In recent times, the most successful example of silent comedy is Mr. Bean.
Created and performed by Rowan Atkinson, Mr. Bean is a manchild in an uncomfortable, ill-fitting suit, who lurches and shuffles from one calamity to the next. The stakes are never too high: Mr. Bean isn’t trying to save hostages from crazed gunmen, or anything of the sort.
