Finite Jest is a new solo performance about comedy, tragedy, and death. It is an anatomy of The Joke. The Joke is that everybody dies. The question is: can we laugh about that? Together? In a theater? Melanie Jame Wolf’s suspicion is that we need to.
The work is an exploration of stand-up comedy as a form. In stand-up, when a joke fails, the comedian is said to have died on stage; stand-up, drop dead. Finite Jest develops ideas and personas from Wolf’s 2024 experimental essay for Delfi Magazin, called The Mean Well. Based on the artist’s experience of having breast cancer, the essay explores ways that a lack of social scripts for dealing with death and illness can produce failures in maintaining cohesion and material care both as a society, and in our personal relationships. It also examines how people's desire to be 'A Good Person' can come from a bad place. And, ironically, get in the way of being practically useful in states of emergency.
