Deaf and Aids Dont Help Funny
Angela Barnes stands upward on comedy and hearing loss
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- Published on 17 Feb 2021
culture
If y'all are suffering from profound loss...of the humour, you may need a mod jester such every bit Angela Barnes, a hearing aid wearer whose career as a stand-up has made her a star of TV shows such every bit Stand up for the Week, and radio programmes The Now Show, and Newsjack.
Becoming a comic performer was the reply to many questions in Angela Barnes' life, and her hearing condition was related to well-nigh of them. She did not effort stand-up until she was in her thirties, her late father having suggested his one-act-loving girl get involved through amateur dramatics. "Don't be empty-headed, that's for those clever people who went to Cambridge," she thought. But when her father died, "I thought life's besides brusque." Angela was 33 and took a stand up-up comedy course at the Komedia in Brighton, where she lived. "Loved information technology!"
A comfortable identify
People who know her from her twenties think she'south shy. When they knew her, she'd sit back in the pub and not join in conversations, but it was her hearing loss, she says, that kept her withdrawn and lacking in confidence. Getting on stage in front end of an audience proved fashion more comfy than sitting in a pub with six people. "I don't have that anxiety of 'am I talking over someone, accept I missed an of import affair?' When I'm on phase with a microphone in my hand, it is ever my turn to talk. There'southward no 1 I'grand interrupting, at that place'due south no one I'm existence rude to by ignoring them, so from that bespeak of view, a lot of the feet is really taken away by knowing that I'm in command of the situation. It's my comfortable place,˝ she explains.
Angela has seen for herself that many comedians have a shyness around people but are quite able to perform, ˝whereas I have this social anxiety but I recall it'south born out of my hearing loss; there's a cause and effect there.˝
Hearing aids
Angela was not wearing hearing aids - she wears them binaurally now - when she started performing, and that had both pros and cons. "I could hear laughs as long as in that location were enough of them, merely what I would sometimes miss, which other performers wouldn't, was if something happened in the room, for instance sometimes I wouldn't hear a heckle, and in some ways that served me well because I merely carried on every bit if I hadn't heard information technology."
Earlier she wore aids, this funny daughter would oft miss her introduction to the stage, and ask someone to push her on when she was announced. At its most comic, this led to confusion when in 2011 she won a BBC New Comedy Award on Radio 2, but from backstage didn't hear her name announced. ˝Joe Lycett was in my terminal,˝ said Angela, ˝and we all assumed Joe was going to win because he's bright. I knew they were most to announce the winner, and I suddenly heard the cheer and I went 'well washed, Joe!' And he went: "It'southward you lot, yous idiot, and he pushed me out in that location.˝ Dazed and dislocated, out she went, tripping over the mic cablevision.
Stigma and self-deprecation
Wearing her devices has impacted Angela's life personally also every bit professionally, and her ease with this hearing technology has fabricated her a firm advocate. "I practise know at least three of my friends have at present got hearing aids since I've had them because I bang on all the time well-nigh how brilliant they are," she says.
And similar whatsoever comedian who points out the applesauce our behaviour, she has a perspective on the stigma long associated with hearing help apply. "To me hearing loss isn't a sign of ageing because I lost my hearing when I was 18,˝ she maintains. ˝It's that fear of feeling like you are degenerating in some fashion, yous're getting old; nevertheless, I think that a bigger sign that you're getting old - rather than wearing hearing aids - is constantly having to ask people to echo themselves."
And—sweet music to the ears of the audiology profession and industry—Angela adds: "I want people to treat going for a hearing test like they treat going for a sight test."
She has found that the stigma is perhaps worse in the UK. "With hearing nosotros accept this sort of mental block and it'southward quite a British thing; my mum's from Canada and my family in Newfoundland all clothing hearing aids,˝ she said near the shock of finding people who retrieve wearing devices is a perfectly normal thing to practice.
˝Life-changing˝ GN I
Formerly wearing GN LiNX Quattro hearing aids, Angela Barnes highlights two major improvements she has found since she changed to the new GN ReSound ONE device. The kickoff is sound quality.
"The only style I can describe it is that, to me, my vocalisation sounds more than natural. With the other hearing aids, information technology sounded processed, like hearing myself on the phone or something. With the microphone-in-ear (Yard&RIE) in that location is a sort of clarity, and less of a candy quality.˝ The second big difference Angela underlines is absence of feedback, particularly noticeable in studio work when wearing headphone monitors (cans). "I practise a lot of radio work and voiceover piece of work and often have to wear cans, and the problem I always had is that they would feed back." This forced her to piece of work without the headphones, but it meant non being able to regulate the volume of her voice. "It makes such a difference. It means I can hear what the producer is saying to me, I can hear any cues that are being fed through without my microphone picking them upward."
Angela wears her hearing aids in both ears all day long, since she needs the phone connectivity and, particularly during the pandemic, makes utilise of the streaming part while working. "The i matter I exercise have to call back to do is to plow my phone off when I get on stage, considering I've been on stage and my phone has started ringing in my ears!" Angela describes her new devices as "life-changing".
Glue ear
Decumbent to ear infections as a child, Angela Barnes was not aware of her hearing loss until she reached her late teens. Her glue ear wasn't identified early and she was in her twenties before she was treated with grommets. As a result of recurrent infections, Angela's eardrums are very scarred. She has tympanosclerosis (calcification of the tympanic membrane), so her eardrums do non vibrate properly. Told that she would never grow out of glue ear, she "worked out that my diet afflicted my hearing quite a lot. If I had too much dairy, that would increase production of the mucous and the glue". Told in her twenties that hearing aids would non piece of work well with her fluctuating hearing loss, she "just dealt with it" becoming reliant on lipreading (non formally) and subtitles. "It made me very introverted really. I did go through quite a period of shyness and anxiety and low in my 20s, which certainly was exacerbated by the hearing loss," admitted Angela. Her loss is in both ears, the right worse than the left.
A platform for hearing loss?
Actors interpret but comedians who, like Angela, write much of their own material have more power to influence opinions. So, as an advocate of hearing assist use, does she utilize her position as someone with an audience to shape thinking on hearing health?
˝Some comedians do see themselves as very much identifying with a group and wanting to represent that group in their comedy, and that'due south fine, whereas I have much more of an everywoman approach to it and go 'well, let'due south simply comment on what's going on and what I think is crazy and what I don't'.˝
But it is important for Angela to connect with other people facing her problems. ˝With hearing loss, I feel a petty bit differently most it because I am happy to talk nearly it and I am happy if people want to tweet me and ask 'where should I go for help?' »
But she does not push the betoken and make hearing loss whatsoever more a function of her cloth than information technology warrants for its contained comedy value. ˝I don't define myself by those things. I don't desire to be the comedian with hearing loss, the comedian with depression, because I call up the best way to challenge preconceptions about those things is non to make a big deal about them, merely mention them in passing. The best way to challenge stigma is not make a large deal, simply arrive part of the conversation,˝ she explains.
Merely if the discipline appears in her performances, its value can extend beyond laughter and into more than personal spaces with people out there. "I practise have a hearing loss and sometimes that leads to funny situations. Sometimes I'll mishear something and information technology's funny. I don't want people to feel that they can't laugh at that." And she admits that there is value in existence able to laugh at your ain hearing loss, and in sharing a cocky-deprecating humour simply every bit long as people know where the lines are. "Yep, I recollect anybody with any degree of disability has used it in a way to sort of deal with the elephant in the room. I always say it'due south much easier for me to take the piss out of myself earlier anyone else gets a gamble to."
The world of comedy
Time was when hard-of-hearing film and sitcom characters who mixed up "hearing test" with "hairy chest" were legitimate comic targets. Fifty-fifty the well-nigh refined scriptwriters looked to them as material for what was then a reproach-free chuckle. Repeated lines of "eh?" and "what?" could allow half-hour comedy stars to act out frustrations that all but the deaf in gild would laugh at and identify with. But even though the auditory problems of this aid-wearing United kingdom comedian would justify her lashing out at that kind of disability sense of humour, she takes a benign and thoughtful view of it, one framed in a deep understanding of one-act that fifty-fifty embraces the value in making fun of her own hearing loss. "Obviously with today's eyes we wait back at that comedy from the 60s and we recoil in horror at what they were maxim at the fourth dimension, but I think if you were at that place at the time your taboos and parameters would have been dissimilar," posits Angela. ˝Correct now we're in a strange time; you lot accept to have the consequences of what you say. Y'all tin can be called out on it. It does make y'all more than guarded."
And she admits: "There are jokes I might have made ten years ago on TV that I wouldn't make now simply considering I tin't exist bothered with arguing with people on Twitter near it. You lot're non allowed any ambiguity any more."
In our highly politicised globe, the stand-up with a hearing problem tin can discover no escape from the scrutiny and the polarisations, but Angela Barnes carefully nuances the scene: ˝Like any, for want of a amend give-and-take, disability, I tin can make jokes virtually it because I feel it, only I wouldn't brand jokes well-nigh cerebral palsy, for case. Most comedians now, we're about punching upwards not punching down. Either you're the butt of the joke or someone who deserves it is."
The audio joke
Athough the history of one-act has produced plenty of purely visual products, the era of silent films providing over two decades of masterful mute works to which cinema equally a whole owes a tremendous debt, the demand to hear the joke has been essential to getting it for close to a century. Information technology is non like shooting fish in a barrel for hearing-impaired persons to proceed upward with the intricately-coded aural data. We all demand to hear non but what is said but besides, in order to catch important references, what has been said at different by moments. And modern sense of humour is dumbo with electric current diplomacy references, not all of which can be read. Without special aid, aural sense of humor is out of bounds for the profoundly deaf.
"I do think most that a lot," says Angela. "I can't imagine what it would be like [to be greatly deaf]. I do quite a lot of comedy on the radio and it'southward very different to doing live performance or Tv where I tin can't rely on my facial expressions or manus gestures at all."
Angela points to the difficulties posed by the translational nature of comedy, underlining the brilliant work done by sign language interpreters, who sometimes work with stand up-ups, merely stressing that "you are always going to lose things in translation", be it to BSL or some other language.
"Comedy is largely about word play and that'south why a lot of it doesn't work in translation. It requires you all having a mutual knowledge of a linguistic communication for it to work, so yes, hearing is really important," she adds.
This also makes captioning comedy live a job of great skill and comic timing, in which those professionals almost have to be comedians themselves. "Absolutely, because it's not similar existence a court stenographer, where you merely go the facts down, you've got to somehow get beyond where the humour is. It'south a real skill for the people that do it," Angela underlines, explaining that captioners will chat to the performers beforehand to become a sense of what is coming, and that the process itself can become an impromptu office of the stand-up's act. "The other nice affair nearly stand-up is, because it isn't scripted, you can take a bit of interplay and interaction with the captioners themselves, and comedy comes out of that as well."
The UK - deport on laughing
From Brighton to the BBC, where Angela's comedy work is frequently channeled through radio, the route has provided her with a start-grade view of laughter in the U.k., a country that she believes ˝has one-act in its Dna˝. Simply this country, in which even the greatest comic stars are seen every bit entertainers rather than great artists, could take greater care of its comedy heritage. Angela recognises the need for back up to keep the comedy scene going, and believes that the coronavirus pandemic has put comedy platforms under such force per unit area that the Arts Quango has finally had to admit that comedy is function of the arts scene. "I think the mental attitude we have to comedy in this land is the deviation betwixt entertainment and art, and one-act is resolutely not seen every bit an art. We're not eligible for arts council funding or anything similar that," says Angela. "Comedy clubs and one-act tours in theatre bring a lot of coin into the economy and British people in particular love comedy. And information technology transcends form." she adds. And if her heart is now in that location in comedy, that must be domicile. It sounds like it: "I feel like the luckiest person in the world. I stumbled into this career when I was 33 and I'1000 only enjoying the ride while information technology lasts."
Source: Audio Infos #140 January-Feb 2021 every bit Comedy of 'Earers
Source: https://www.audiology-worldnews.com/awareness/4014-awn-long-read-angela-barnes-stands-up-on-comedy-and-hearing-loss
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