A dozen young folk in bright thrift-store duds got on the Blue Line at Jackson and took seats in pairs, trying not to laugh–at least not yet. Their intent was in fact to chortle in unison when the doors opened at each subsequent el stop, in a performance-art project called the Great Guffaw, staged by School of the Art Institute grad and employee Meg Duguid. The forced hilarity was supposed to elicit real, contagious laughter from the unsuspecting public, but on the evening of January 30, the Loop was filling with sloppy snow and the bundled, sweaty rush-hour commuters were having none of it.
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Before they got on the train, Duguid had circled the troops–mostly her friends from college, gathered by an E-mail sent out earlier in the week. After a couple participants who didn’t already know each other were introduced, she explained her strategy over the croon of a baby-faced busker: the participants were to spread out on the same car and act natural, commence laughing as soon as the doors opened at Monroe, cease as soon as the doors closed, and then do it again at the next stop. Duguid assured them that sitting in pairs would make it easier. “Laugh like you’ve never laughed before!” she commanded with a genuine chuckle. She remarked to me that she hoped the stunt wouldn’t trigger any schizophrenic episodes.
“Two guys in front of me were trying to laugh along,” said another vet, Maire Kennedy. “They were going ‘Huh, huh, huh!’”
“Not that September 11’s had any effect on this particular situation,” said guffawer John Greenfield, who met Duguid through some mutual musician friends, “but you couldn’t do this on an airplane. You’d get in trouble.”
