Comic finds humor in abyss of mental illness

What on earth could be funny about contemplating suicide? Or suffering from bipolar disorder or OCD?

Lots, says American comedian Maria Bamford, who’s been there, is still fighting and draws on her ordeal to make people laugh.
Part of her mission is to break taboos and test limits as she pokes fun at her experience with problems normally discussed in whispers if at all.
Bamford, a petite 45-year-old blond with a high-pitched, squeaky voice, also wants to show that even in the nadir of a person’s life there’s humor in there, somewhere.
She’s no household name but has developed a cult following in America, both among standup comedy fans and fellow comedians. In 2014, she was named America’s best club comic.
For Bamford, nothing is off limits: thinking about killing herself, life lived on meds, her family’s well-meaning but sometimes clumsy efforts to understand and help her, the times she’s suffered meltdowns and ended up in a psych ward.
“Go in and the chairs are broken and the puzzles are only half there. You know, half the puzzle pieces are lost,” Bamford said of her experience, in a recent conference call with news outlets.
Bamford spoke to discuss a new Netflix series, “Lady Dynamite,” in which she stars and plays herself — a mediumly successful Los Angeles comic trying to get back on her feet after suffering a breakdown and spending six months living with her parents in Minnesota.
The pace of the show is frantic, with rapid fire, chirpy dialogue suggestive of a mind running on overdrive. The scenes are rendered in bright, in-your-face colors. It sometimes turns surreal.
That comedians now see fit to shock people by toying with dead-serious things is a reflection of a society in which everybody shares pretty much everything on social media anyway, said Gil Greengross, an evolutionary psychologist who specializes in humor.
And the link between creativity — in comedians, writers, painters and other artists — and mental disorders has been the subject of much study and forms part of our cultural lore. Consider the image of the “mad scientist,” or ranting brainiac, he said.
Her brand of comedy is not for everyone. Bamford once did a half-hour set on suicide for a conference of therapists in Washington.
“I bombed so terribly with my suicide chunk,” she said. “It did not go well with the therapy crowd.”
But her show “Lady Dynamite” is getting very good reviews.

Source ; Arab News