A comedian bombs on purpose for 21 minutes—and it's the most uncomfortable art you'll see.
Hilarious is set to examine the possibility of dysfunctional humor and laughter stirred when there is no reason to laugh. Hilarious presents a stand up monologue of a female comedian performing live in front of a studio audience. If humor is a mechanism set to cope in particular ways with disturbing, sometimes forbidden topics, this performance not only offsets these structures through their failure, but also offers a different manifestation of these topics, left exposed without the guise of laughter.
Direction
Rosen weaponizes the comedy special format brutally.
Acting
Furstenberg's deadpan commitment is genuinely haunting.
Director
Roee Rosen
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Rosen is an Israeli visual artist, not a comedian; this screened at documenta and MoMA, not comedy clubs. The 'failure' is the entire thesis.
The title 'Hilarious' is itself the cruelest joke—Rosen's entire career interrogates how Jewish humor became a compulsory performance of trauma processing.
US
