During his residency at HMK the Irish/Dutch artist Seán Hannan researched the history of the British music hall comedy and American vaudeville in relation to contemporary conspiracy theories and censorship. The title is a historical reference to the early form of stand-up comedy where, prior to a performance, the Lord Chamberlain ran through the texts and censored all material that could possibly disrupt the peace by underlining it in blue. The underlined, censored text is also called 'blue material'.
In a reversal of this history, Hannan has provided stand-up comedian Adam Fields with contemporary 'blue material', such as leaked documents of the NSA and other secret information that was never intended for public eyes, and asked him to base a show on this. This show isn't funny. The performance will be done in absence of an audience, isolating joke after joke, exposing the political message behind it. The comedian is left isolated and transformed into a man with a failing, abject, conspiracy-like vision of the world.
The registration of the show will be displayed in the cinema of HMK. The elements used for the performance will become part of an installation inside the chapel. What happened in the past will become tangible in the present, and the principles of comedy will be briefly relived in order to write its final chapter
www.seanhannan.nl