Richard Altieri
Amherst College
Project
Bridge of Laughter: Towards Cross-Cultural Comedy
Chile, Taiwan, Singapore, United Kingdom
Humor has the power to both reflect and reshape a culture’s artistic, social, and political values. To better understand differences in comedic sensibilities, I will travel to four countries with widely varying comedic traditions. In each place, I will employ an immersive, participatory methodology to engage fully with the cultural layers humor contains. At the broadest level, my goal is to work towards cross-cultural comedy: humor found in the interstices of various comedic traditions. On a more direct level, my goal is form connections through laughter, and encourage others to do the same.