“Dying is easy; comedy is hard,” according to the early 19th-century actor Edmund Kean. I would append to that statement: “Not feeling very well is easy; reviewing comedy is hard.”
The primary problem with penetrating the comic mind is that comedy is used as a shield, a defence mechanism, really, against all foes. Comedy comes from a dark place rather than the light place it seems to…
Joseph Kertes
Joseph Kertes is a winner of the Stephen Leacock Award and founder of the first-ever full-time college program in comedy writing and performance. He is currently dean of creative and performing arts at Humber College in Toronto.
Articles by
Joseph Kertes
When I was writing my most recent novel, my father asked me what I was working on, and before I could answer, he said, “I hope it’s not another book about me.” It did not strike me until that moment that all stories—at least all my stories—have his presence looming over them. My father was an easy…
In Auschwitz there stood a building that housed all the valuables confiscated from the inmates. Inmates and prison guards alike referred to the building as “Kanada.” Early Chinese immigrants to this country felt they were bound for “Gold Mountain.” Josef Škvorecký, the Czech-Canadian novelist, once told me that, “when my wife and I escaped to…