Punch Up: When Comedy Risks Punching Down
To punch down means to criticize, mock or make fun of someone who has less power, lower social status or fewer privileges than you. The term is most often used in comedy and social commentary to describe jokes or insults directed at vulnerable or marginalized people.
To punch up is to mock or criticize those who hold greater power and privilege—politicians, billionaires and those who take advantage of their position. Or, quite often, politicians who are billionaires.
There is a play called Punch Up by Kat Sandler.
It is a dark comedy with profound potential. Beneath the jokes, it deals with suicide, alcoholism, loneliness, grief and the desperate human need for connection.
A young woman named Brenda stands at the edge, contemplating ending her life. One by one, life has taken away everyone she loved. Her father died of a heart attack. Her mother was killed because of distracted driving. Brenda has been left alone with her grief, her anger and the crushing belief that it all may have been her fault and there may be nothing left worth living for.
Then Duncan makes her a high-stakes deal: he believes he can make her laugh. If he succeeds, she agrees to keep living. If he fails, he promises to help her end it all.
There is only one problem: Duncan isn’t funny.
In order to learn how to make Brenda laugh, Duncan kidnaps Pat, a bitter professional comedian struggling with his divorce, his alcoholism and his failing career. Attempt after attempt, Pat tries—and fails—to teach Duncan how comedy works.
But perhaps Pat fails because comedy cannot simply be taught.
Or perhaps he fails because he cannot connect with Duncan as a human being.
Does Duncan learn how to be funny? Can he save Brenda? Does Pat finally rediscover the secret to comedy that he has ignored—or actively suppressed—for most of his career?
More importantly, can these three broken people find a reason to connect with one another?
Punch Up is an easy play to perform badly. If a production leans too heavily on the comedy, it risks doing the very thing its title warns us about: punching down.
The characters can become jokes rather than people. Their struggles can become punchlines instead of wounds. We can lose the human connection beneath the absurdity—the who and the why behind each character.
Why doesn’t Duncan understand humour the way everyone else seems to? Is he on the autism spectrum? Is his thinking affected by a past injury? Does he simply experience and interpret the world differently?
The actor playing Duncan must discover why he cannot see the humour that others see. If the actor fails to understand that, Duncan can easily be reduced to simply “dumb” or “stupid.” At that point, the production is no longer laughing with him. It is laughing at him.
That is punching down.
Duncan must be sincere and endearing enough that the audience understands why Brenda might take the risk of going to see him. His inability to understand humour cannot be his entire character. Beneath it must be genuine compassion, determination and an honest desire to save another person—even if he has absolutely no idea how to do it.
Then there is Pat.
Why can’t Pat teach Duncan?
Is Duncan truly unteachable? Or does Pat lack the ability to teach? Has Pat become so bitter, isolated and consumed by his own failures that he can no longer connect with another person?
Pat understands the structure of comedy. He understands timing, rhythm, misdirection and the mechanics of a joke. But comedy is more than mechanics. It requires observation, empathy and an understanding of what makes people human.
Pat may know how to deliver a punchline, but has he forgotten how to listen?
And then there is Brenda.
How does she truly see her past? Through guilt mixed with anger? Guilt mixed with grief? Guilt mixed with shame? Does she blame herself for surviving when everyone she loved is gone?
How can she possibly see hope in Duncan? Is she truly ready to give up on life, or is some part of her still waiting for someone to give her a reason not to?
The actor playing Brenda carries perhaps the heaviest load. She has three powerful monologues about loss, but understanding the words is merely the tip of the iceberg. She must understand what those losses have done to Brenda. She must approach suicide and mental health with honesty, compassion and responsibility.
Brenda cannot simply be “the suicidal woman.” She cannot exist only as Duncan’s objective or as the prize he receives if he finally learns to be funny. She is a complete human being living with unbearable pain. Her humour, anger, grief and choices must all belong to her.
If any of these characters are reduced to a condition, a weakness or a convenient joke, the play punches down.
But when their humanity is respected, Punch Up becomes something much more powerful. It becomes a story about three damaged people who do not know how to ask for help. One understands kindness but not comedy. One understands comedy but has lost his kindness. One has lost nearly everything and no longer knows whether human connection is enough to keep her alive.
The comedy is important. It gives the audience permission to breathe. But the laughter should never come at the expense of the people carrying the story.
The comedy works because of the connection.
And perhaps that is the real secret Pat has forgotten: humour is not merely about finding someone or something to punch.
Sometimes it is about reaching through the darkness, recognizing another human being and saying:
I see you. You are not alone.
By Xavier Jeanne
