HowlRound Theatre Commons: In October 2018, HowlRound hosted a convening about comedy in theatre, where the issue was brought up that “the American theatre has forgotten” comedy or, at least, it does not solicit, fund, or produce the work of comic dramatists as much as it should. As a professor of comedy’s theatrical history, I was asked to speak on why I advocate for its study as a genre and discipline, and the following is a version of what I shared with the participants.
2 comments:
In a world where so many things seem to be going wrong, and how everything seen in the media appears to be terrible, in general we forget to stop and breathe. A lot of my humor tends to be pretty targeted at myself, my situations, or generally dark things, because making light of those things is part of how I cope with life. I agree with the article here when it says that comedy tells us who we are. The things that we feel like we are able to joke about, or what we find is funny does speak a lot about our culture and our identities. I know that I’ve noticed that the culture in a lot of places seems to have gotten more sensitive to making fun of anything. A lot more people seem to take jokes and twist them to feel like they were personally targeted by them. I think people just need to learn to take a step back more often and learn to not always take themselves so seriously.
I really enjoy this article because I personally find comedy when done well so fascinating and powerful. Looking at the history of comedy really does sound fascinating because as the article states it is so insightful to what is relevant in our culture right now. You really need to have a great amount of awareness of society and the audience your presenting to be effective in making the audience do something that initially appears simple, laugh. It is so far from simple you can bet that a show that a variety of audiences respond well to was either very thoughtful or really lucky. I also believe that comedy takes on a new level when it is used in order to questions opinions ad views of the world if you want to communicate with people and have them more open to consider things then comedy is a great way for you to have them invite you to share your opinion, there is real power in getting people to want to listen to you.
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