The World’s Most Postmodern Comedy Premise

The sketch begins with one actor onstage, clearly getting ready for an acid trip, waiting for the drug to kick in. A second actor enters—his roommate who will be his guide. His first words are, "Did you take it yet?"



Dialogue proceeds as the drug takes effect, with the first actor describing how he feels as his mind "expands," a fairly familiar "Oh-wow" litany, played for laughs.



Then the first actor takes a brilliant step. Under the "influence" of the drug, he jumps off the stage into the audience. His "guide," locked into the stage reality, acts as if he had disappeared. And when his colleague tries to talk to him from the audience, he refuses to recognize his presence.

FIRST ACTOR: I haven’t disappeared—I’m in the audience!

SECOND ACTOR: There is no audience.

FIRST ACTOR: Then who do you think is laughing?

SECOND ACTOR: It’s just a sound coming from the air shaft.

FIRST ACTOR: Oh, you think I’m in the ventilator? ( Putting his head onstage ) Now can you see me?

SECOND ACTOR: DON’T DO THAT! Don’t walk through walls like that.

The sketch then proceeds with the tripping actor free to roam the audience and the theater in general, and the straight actor, who would not break, "trapped" by the four walls of stage reality. On any level this was a noncensorious and nonpromotional exploration of altered reality (which was of course "normal" reality) and its relationship to "normal" reality, in this case stage reality.

From Tony Hendra’s Going Too Far: The Rise and Demise of Anti-Establishment Humor .