Synopsis of the Comedy of Errors
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Seriously Playful and Playfully Serious: the Helpfulness of Humorous Parody Michael Richard Lucas Clemson University
Clemson University TigerPrints All Dissertations Dissertations 5-2015 Seriously Playful and Playfully Serious: The Helpfulness of Humorous Parody Michael Richard Lucas Clemson University Follow this and additional works at: https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations Recommended Citation Lucas, Michael Richard, "Seriously Playful and Playfully Serious: The eH lpfulness of Humorous Parody" (2015). All Dissertations. 1486. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/1486 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations at TigerPrints. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TigerPrints. For more information, please contact [email protected]. SERIOUSLY PLAYFUL AND PLAYFULLY SERIOUS: THE HELPFULNESS OF HUMOROUS PARODY A Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of Clemson University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Rhetorics, Communication, and Information Design by Michael Richard Lucas May 2014 Accepted by: Victor J. Vitanza, Committee Chair Stephaine Barczewski Cynthia Haynes Beth Lauritis i ABSTRACT In the following work I create and define the parameters for a specific form of humorous parody. I highlight specific problematic narrative figures that circulate the public sphere and reinforce our serious narrative expectations. However, I demonstrate how critical public pedagogies are able to disrupt these problematic narrative expectations. Humorous parodic narratives are especially equipped to help us in such situations when they work as a critical public/classroom pedagogy, a form of critical rhetoric, and a form of mass narrative therapy. These findings are supported by a rhetorical analysis of these parodic narratives, as I expand upon their ability to provide a practical model for how to create/analyze narratives both inside/outside of the classroom. -
The Importance of Being Earnest SEETHU BABY MANGALAM 2020-2021 the Importance of Being Earnest Comedy of Manners
SUBJECT: BRITISH LITERATURE 19TH CENTURY TOPIC: The Importance of being Earnest SEETHU BABY MANGALAM 2020-2021 The Importance of being Earnest Comedy of Manners A Comedy of Manners is a play concerned with satirising society’s manners A manner is the method in which everyday duties are performed, conditions of society, or a way of speaking. It implies a polite and well-bred behaviour. Comedy of Manners is known as high comedy because it involves a sophisticated wit and talent in the writing of the script. In this sense it is both intellectual and very much the opposite of slapstick. Comedy of Manners In a Comedy of Manners however, there is often minimal physical action and the play may involve heavy use of dialogue. A Comedy of Manners usually employs an equal amount of both satire and farce resulting in a hilarious send-up of a particular social group. This was usually the middle to upper classes in society. The satire tended to focus on their materialistic nature, never-ending desire to gossip and hypocritical existence. Comedy of Manners The plot of such a comedy, usually concerned with an illicit love affair or similarly scandalous matter, is subordinate to the play’s brittle atmosphere, witty dialogue, and pungent commentary on human foibles. This genre is characterized by realism (art), social analysis and satire. These comedies held a mirror to the finer society of their age. These comedies are thus true pictures of the noble society of the age. This genre held a mirror to the high society of the Restoration Age. -
The Comedy of Errors
By William Shakespeare | Directed by Jane Nichols All original material copyright © Seattle Shakespeare Company 2015 WELCOME Dear Educators, Welcome to Seattle Shakespeare Company's 25th Anniversary Season! This season's theme is "Bloodlines," and we're diving deep into plays about family — both the functional, and the conflicted. To start off, we're staging this fall's fast-paced version of The Comedy of Errors. This play is one of Shakespeare's earliest, and is a light comedy with a dark backdrop. The framing story of this play is of Egeon, who sought his son all the way to Ephesus and is sentenced to death because he is from Syracuse. It is on top of this dreary story that our effervescent comedy of mistaken identity is built. We will see a more mature version of the unexplained feud between Ephesus and Syracuse later this season, when we produce Shakespeare's beloved tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, with its most famous of family feuds between the Capulets and Montagues. In between these two shows, we will also be producing the stories of a war-weary mother trying to protect her children in Mother Courage and Her Children, a father who must avenge his destroyed family in Titus Andronicus, and a mother who needed to make tough choices to support her daughter in Mrs. Warren's Profession. Thank you for your continued support of Seattle Shakespeare Company, and we hope you enjoy The Comedy of Errors! Best, Michelle Burce Education Director www.seattleshakespeare.org/education 206-733-8228 ext. 251 or [email protected] PRODUCTION SPONSORS CONTENTS Plot Synopsis . -
1 a Comedy of Errors Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love
A Comedy of Errors or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Sensibility- Invariantism about ‘Funny’ Ryan Doerfler Abstract: In this essay, I argue that sensibility-invariantism about ‘funny’ is defensible, not just as a descriptive hypothesis, but, as a normative position as well. What I aim to do over the course of this essay is to make the realist commitments of the sensibility- invariantist out to be much more tenable than one might initially think them to be. I do so by addressing the two major sources of discontent with sensibility-invariantism: the observation that discourse about comedy exhibits significant divergence in judgment, and the fact that disagreements about comedy, unlike disagreements about, say, geography, often strike us as fundamentally intractable. Consider the following scenario: Jane (27 years old) and Sarah (nine) are together on the couch watching an episode of Arrested Development. While Jane thinks that the show is utterly hilarious and is, as a result, having a wonderful time, Sarah finds the show slightly confusing and is, as a result, rather bored. During a commercial break, Jane turns to Sarah and says, ‘Arrested Development is incredibly funny!’ In the above scenario, Sarah will likely respond by saying something like, ‘I don’t think it’s very funny,’ a response that Jane will regard as an attempt to call into question her preceding assertion. Given the circumstances, it is likely that will make certain concessions (e.g., ‘Oh… well yes I can see how the show’s humor is probably a bit lost on someone your age.’). -
Comedic Devices Funsheet
!Find The Funny: Comedic Devices Funsheet Every comedic script uses comedic devices. A single scene will contain multiple comedic devices. Use this list of comedic devices to identify where and how the writer is expressing the comedy in your audition scenes. Then use your discoveries to inform your acting choices! Gaffe – An act or remark causing embarrassment by shattering a social construct. These are usually embarrassing to the characters (and funny to us) because they are done/seen/found out in public. • Conscious Gaffe – Character is aware they are going to be embarrassed but you do it anyway. • Unconscious Gaffe- Character isn’t aware of their Gaffe / that it is a gaffe. Opposites - What makes reversals and unexpected moments work. Play both with conviction and highlight the opposites to get the biggest laugh. Social Awkwardness – A moment that draws its humor from one or multiple characters being socially uncomfortable. This device revolves around anxiety of social interactions (either in general or with one particular person). This can come from the fear of being rejected/made fun of, not knowing what to say, etc. Overstatement – Hyperbole. An extreme magnification or exaggeration. It blows something completely out of proportion for a distorted effect. Happens often when a character puts huge value on something that, to us, seems trivial. Understatement – Making something seem much less than what it is. An under-exaggeration. Copyright Acting Pros Studio 2016 1 !Find The Funny: Comedic Devices Funsheet Verbal Irony – What is said is the opposite of the meaning. Situational Irony – What happens is the opposite of what is expected. -
The Hothouse and Dynamic Equilibrium in the Works of Harold Pinter
Ben Ferber The Hothouse and Dynamic Equilibrium in the Works of Harold Pinter I have no doubt that history will recognize Harold Pinter as one of the most influential dramatists of all time, a perennial inspiration for the way we look at modern theater. If other playwrights use characters and plots to put life under a microscope for audiences, Pinter hands them a kaleidoscope and says, “Have at it.” He crafts multifaceted plays that speak to the depth of his reality and teases and threatens his audience with dangerous truths. In No Man’s Land, Pinter has Hirst attack Spooner, who may or may not be his old friend: “This is outrageous! Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”1 Hirst then launches into a monologue beginning: “I might even show you my photograph album. You might even see a face in it which might remind you of your own, of what you once were.”2 Pinter never fully resolves Spooner’s identity, but the mens’ actions towards each other are perfectly clear: with exacting language and wit, Pinter has constructed a magnificent struggle between the two for power and identity. In 1958, early in his career, Pinter wrote The Hothouse, an incredibly funny play based on a traumatic personal experience as a lab rat at London’s Maudsley Hospital, proudly founded as a modern psychiatric institution, rather than an asylum. The story of The Hothouse, set in a mental hospital of some sort, is centered around the death of one patient, “6457,” and the unexplained pregnancy of another, “6459.” Details around both incidents are very murky, but varying amounts of culpability for both seem to fall on the institution’s leader, Roote, and his second-in- command, Gibbs. -
ROMANTIC COMEDY Laughter and Culture Comedy, Repression, And
ROMANTIC COMEDY Laughter and Culture Comedy, Repression, and Cultural Dreamwork Sigmund Freud jokes function a form of liberation; whatever a society represses frequently returns in the form of comedy to taunt it. This often occurs quite literally in the figure of the Shakespearean- like fool who tells a truth that others dare not utter. Several likely prospects on the street but does a double take and hurries away when one of this would-be brides turns out to be black and another Jewish. For the Marx Brothers, nothing is sacred. From Racism to Social Integration Immigrants: Chaplin to Depardieu Chaplin, whose “Tramp” character embodies an essential ambivalence toward society. Thus, Chaplin comedies often play against the genre’s expectations, striking a note of pathos. The film’s attack on phoniness and its celebration of authentic feeling moves it, however, toward Chaplinesque pathos rather than comic triumph: Depardieu’s rediscovered integrity forces him to abandon his initial, self-centered goal of getting citizenship by whatever means possible. Integration and the Regeneration of Society Hundreds of other comedies in which an individual struggles to enter society. Through the theme of comic integration, American screen comedies demonstrate the flexibility of our democracy social structure through its ability to absorb new members and integrate them into a new social order, whose unity and diversity exceeds that of the old order. It Happened One Night (1934) , for example, begins with a ‘”bad’ marriage between an heiress (Claudette Colbert) and a playboy- socialite. The final marriage is “right’ not only because Colbert and Gable really love one another but also because it heals the divisions within society, establishing a new order through the symbolic marriage of representatives of different social classes. -
THIS ISSUE: Comedy
2014-2015 September ISSUE 1 scene. THE JOURNAL OF THE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS THEATRE ASSOCIATION THIS ISSUE: Comedy www.ista.co.uk WHO’S WHO @ ISTA… CONTENTS Patron 2 Connections Professor Jonothan Neelands, by Rebecca Kohler National Teaching Fellow, Chair of Drama and Theatre Education in the Institute of Education 3 Comedy d’un jour and Chair of Creative Education in the Warwick Business School (WBS) at the University of by Francois Zanini Warwick. 4 Learning through humour Board of trustees by Mike Pasternak Iain Stirling (chair), Scotland Formerly Superintendent, Advanced Learning Schools, Riyadh. Recently retired. 8 Desperately seeking the laughs Jen Tickle (vice chair), Jamaica by Peter Michael Marino Head of Visual & Performing Arts and Theory of Knowledge at The Hillel Academy, Jamaica. 9 “Chou” – the comic actor in Chinese opera Dinos Aristidou, UK by Chris Ng Freelance writer, director, consultant. 11 Directing comedy Alan Hayes, Belgium by Sacha Kyle Theatre teacher International School Brussels. Sherri Sutton, Switzerland 12 Videotape everything, change and be Comic, director and chief examiner for IB DP Theatre. Theatre teacher at La Chataigneraie. grateful Jess Thorpe, Scotland by Dorothy Bishop Co Artistic Director of Glas(s) Performance and award winning young people’s company 13 Seriously funny Junction 25. Visiting. Lecturer in the Arts in Social Justice at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. by Stephen Finegold Honorary life members 15 How I got the best job in the world! Dinos Aristidou, UK Being a clown, being a -
Historians' Analysis of Gilbert and Sullivan's Impact on the Development of the American Musical Theatre
Winthrop University From the SelectedWorks of Andrew Vorder Bruegge, Ph.D. June, 2011 A Dull Engima: Historians’ Analysis of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Impact on the Development of the American Musical Theatre Andrew Vorder Bruegge, Winthrop University Available at: https://works.bepress.com/andrew_vorder_bruegge/20/ A Dull Engima: Historians’ Analysis of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Impact on the Development of the American Musical Theatre Theatre scholars generally give short shrift to Gilbert, Sullivan, and D’Oyly Carte in narrating the historical development of the American musical theatre, and it’s worth investigating this phenomenon and its causes. By glossing over D’Oyly Carte, Gilbert, and Sullivan scholars have overlooked the historical significance of the Savoy triumvirate for American musical theatre—they developed a formula for producing successful musical theatre productions that Broadway showmakers ultimately embraced in later decades. That formula included the following components: a long-term, symbiotic collaboration between librettist and composer who crafted the book first and wrote music to complement it; a theatrical product that integrated story, music, character, and lyrics into a cohesive whole; the crafting of a product for middlebrow appeal; marketing practices now identified as “retail theatre;” and delegating specialized artistic tasks to an extensive, professionalized, artistic staff under firm directorial leadership. Unquestionably, Gilbert and Sullivan proved that operetta could generate big profits, and American theatricians copied them (Kislan 98). Gilbert and Sullivan’s rollicking trans-Atlantic success in 1879 motivated the American composer, Julius Eichberg, to revise his 1862 operetta, The Doctor of Alcantara, and publish a new version in 1879 with two new songs that closely imitated the Gilbert patter song and some distinctive Sullivanesque musical elements (Kaufman xviii). -
The Comedy of Errors and Free Shakespeare for Kids Are Made Possible by These Generous Sponsors and Supporters
HOME OF MARYLAND HOME OF MAGAZINE.COM MARYLAND The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund creator of the Baker Artist Awards | www.bakerartistawards.org MAGAZINE.COM A Sustaining Sponsor of Free Shakespeare for Kids MARYLAND The Comedy of Errors and Free Shakespeare for Kids are made possible by these generous sponsors and supporters. MAGAZINE.COM Chesapeake Shakespeare Company Ian Gallanar* Lesley Malin* Patrick Kilpatrick* Founding Artistic Director Managing Director Production Manager The Comedy of Errors By William Shakespeare Directed by Scott Alan Small* Technical Director: Daniel O’Brien* | Costume Designer: Heather C. Jackson | Stage Manager: Sarah Thompson Setting: Ephesus CAST AEGEON, a merchant from Syracuse .........................................................................................................................................Frank Mancino* SOLINUS, Duke of Ephesus .................................................................................................................................................................Kate Forton* ANTIPHOLUS OF SYRACUSE ................................................................................................................................................Matthew Ancarrow* DROMIO OF SYRACUSE, a servant ................................................................................................................................................Kelsey Painter* FIRST MERCHANT, SECOND MERCHANT ........................................................................................................................................ -
Comedic Devices HUMOROUS LITERARY DEVICES About Comedic Devices
Comedic Devices HUMOROUS LITERARY DEVICES About Comedic Devices We have all heard of literary devices in literature. Since elementary school, we have studies things like plot, setting, denouement, and conflict. We have even studied literary devices that fall specifically under the umbrella of figurative language: metaphor, simile, allegory, allusion. Did you know that there are certain literary devices whose purpose is to enhance the comedic aspects of literature? We will be looking at several of these devices and evaluating our text, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for both examples of comedic devices and to explore how these devices enhance the comedy of Shakespeare’s play. Repetition Repetition in comedic writing is a bit different than repetition in poetry or prose. In comedy, repetition can also be referred to as a callback. It occurs when a statement or a theme is recalled as the punch line to a joke or at the close of a scene. Repetition is also considered a “classic example of the tension and release …where repetition is used to set up a modus operandi and build tension before [a solution] provides the resolving juxtaposition.” (Comedic Device) Example: Picture a comedic scene in which a wife and husband are getting ready to go to work. The wife judiciously reminds the husband that “It’s cold outside, so grab a sweater.” Throughout their morning routine, the wife keeps reminding the husband to grab a sweater. When the wife drives by her husband on his bicycle (on his way to work) we see the icicles hanging from his nose and his face and ears red with cold. -
Comic Actors and Comic Acting on the 19Th Century American Stage
"Those That Play Your Clowns:" Comic Actors and Comic Acting on the 19th Century American Stage Barnard Hewitt (Barnard Hewitt's Fellows Address was delivered at the ATA Convention in Chicago, August 16, 1977.) It seems to me that critics and historians of theatre have neglected comedians and the acting of comedy, and I ask myself why should this be so? Nearly everyone enjoys the acting of comedy. As the box office has regularly demonstrated, more people enjoy comedy than enjoy serious drama. I suspect that comedy and comedians are neglected because critics and scholars feel, no doubt unconsciously that because they arouse laughter rather than pity and fear, they don't deserve serious study. Whatever the reason for this neglect, it seems to me unjust. In choosing the subject for this paper, I thought I might do something to redress that injustice. I hoped to identify early styles of comic acting on our stage, discover their origins in England, note mutations caused by their new environment, and take note of their evolution into new styles. I don't need to tell you how difficult it is to reconstruct with confidence the acting style of any period before acting was recorded on film. One must depend on what can be learned about representative individuals: about the individual's background, early training and experience, principal roles, what he said about acting and about his roles, pictures of him in character, and reports by his contemporaries - critics and ordinary theatregoers - of what he did and how he spoke. First-hand descriptions of an actor's performance in one or more roles are far and away the most enlightening evidence, but nothing approaching Charles Clarke's detailed description of Edwin Booth's Hamlet is available for an American comic actor.1 Comedians have written little about their art.2 What evidence I found is scattered and ambiguous when it is not contradictory.