The flop: oscillation, disruption, misdirection, and transgression

Abstract

The Flop: Oscillation, Disruption, Misdirection, and Transgression Philippe Gaulier’s approach to training performers and stand up comedy training in the Second City industry embrace a pedagogy of failure where “surfing the flop”-- and meta-commentary about the flop—is pleasurable for audience and performer. Both teach physical presence, vulnerability, and an immediate, mischievous relationship with their audience through rhythm as first priorities in generating what Stromberg would call ‘audience entrainment’ (2012). Gaulier’s and Second City students both seek situational empathy (Keen, 2014). They start in familiar realms and then seek high stakes catastrophe or hyperbole, stretching plausibility while racing towards breakdown. Performers misdirect the audience by promising, and then distorting, cultural tropes near and dear to them. Performers suffer as they expose, or encounter competing logics that undermine their ability to present a smooth dramatic world. When deviant imagination defeats willed control, and the deterministic physics of the constructed dramatic universe exacerbates the gap between will and control, the audience empathizes with, dreams with, and loves the vulnerable performer. The performers thrive by using tropes that set up and explode an audience’s “circle of expectation” (Johnston, 2002) in a dramaturgy similar to live role play, where the audience member is player, the stage performance text is the game world, and the techniques of entrainment are Oscillation, Disruption, Misdirection, and Transgression.