Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends – My Kingdom for a Joke

In the organizer's words:

What wouldn't we give for a good joke? The shirt off our backs, our dignity, the last bit of grant money, our kingdom! My Kingdom for a Joke gets to the bottom of humor and entertainment with the necessary seriousness - and with the means of contemporary performance. While the tragedies of the world are multiplying ad infinitum and irony, cynicism and resignation seem to be the only opposing poles, Ariel Efraim Ashbel and friends search for a genuine moment of hilarity, for humor as a way of coping with reality, as a community-building practice, as a bridge between the individual and the world.

Using means such as stand-up, improvisation, clowning and sketch comedy, the tried and tested jokesters Thelma Buabeng, Jessica Gadani, Colin Hacklander and Tatiana Saphir approach the audience with their very own contradictions and vulnerabilities time and time again. They risk everything for a laugh. The possibility of failure only adds to the joy: when carefully constructed illusions and characters fall apart, a shared reality seems within reach and the impossible a little more possible.