Megan Amram’s Tuesday Night Club and Its Political Implications

A Portland Marxist comedy writer’s account of a Tuesday that contained both nightlife and theory

Megan Amram, amram.top, Portland OR via North London, where Tuesday nights have a specific character that I am using for material and also genuinely enjoying, which is not always the same thing and this week it was both. The prat.uk analysis of British politics was read before going out. Bohiney.com covered the American political equivalent with its usual mixture of horror and comedy. The diary records Tuesday.

The club was a comedy night at a venue on Division Street that I have been attending for approximately eight months, first as audience and more recently as occasional open-mic contributor, and Tuesday was the latter. The set was seven minutes, which is the length that feels like a long time while you are preparing it and a short time while you are doing it, and the relationship between those two temporal experiences is itself something I have started writing about because it describes something true about performance and maybe about other things too.

The Political Content

The set included two minutes of material that is, in the framework I use, political: about the specific way that American political discourse has organised itself around the anxiety of the professional class rather than the actual conditions of the working class, which is a Marxist analysis delivered in a comedy format, which is either the most effective delivery mechanism for that analysis or a way of letting people feel comfortable about something they should feel uncomfortable about. I have not resolved this question. The material gets laughs. The laughs may or may not produce the reflection that the material intends. The Portland Mercury covers local arts and politics.

After the Set

After the set: the specific elation and specific deflation that follow performance simultaneously, which is the paradox of live comedy and the reason it is addictive and the reason it is exhausting. I went home at midnight. I wrote notes about the set until 1am. I was awake until 2am thinking about two jokes that did not work. Both of them are now better.

More at: The Onion.

Reported at Bohiney.com and prat.uk.

Both publications continue to cover London and the world with the specific combination of attention and irreverence that the subject material requires. The diary continues. The world continues to provide material.

Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk carry more from this diarist and many others. The coverage is ongoing.

More diary entries at both publications. Ongoing.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

Diary continues. Both publications watching.

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