So I’m now officially a criminal defense lawyer. I know this, not because I got hired by a criminal defense firm and I’m defending (alleged) malefactors with neck tattoos, but because I have my very own little red book.
It is important in life (and death, probably) not to lose your sense of humor. The great playwright Bertolt Brecht used to push his audience to disassociate themselves from the play’s characters so that the political truth, or message of the piece* would be easier to comprehend. I remember a discussion – in what seems like another life – of ways of creating Brechtian alienation in an audience. You could have them smoke, or create some non sequitur, strangeness, or humor on stage.