Posts Tagged ‘comedy’

For the more than two centuries of our history, Shakespeare has remained the most produced playwright in American theaters. From Junior High productions of Romeo and Juliet and amateur community theater stagings of Macbeth to professional companies updating Hamlet to gangland Chicago or contemporary New York, Shakespeare has retained a unique relationship with the colonies founded during his lifetime (see the NEA’s “History of Shakespeare in America” ). Over the past few decades a growing number of American cities have organized free summer Shakespeare festivals, including metropolitan centers like Dallas, Austin, Houston, and Abilene.

As we consider the challenges of bringing a 400 year old text to the stage, this week you will have the opportunity to hear an interview with an experienced actor and director. Eric Harrell has taught theatre arts at ACU and Regent University and is a member of Actor’s Equity and the Screen Actor’s Guild. His experience with Shakespeare includes appearing as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, Orlando in As You Like It, Antipholus in The Comedy of Errors, as well as featured parts in Measure for Measure and Richard III.

Before class, watch this short interview with Eric as he discusses how he would approach a summer production of Twelfth Night. He’ll take on questions about the play, the Bard, and bringing both successfully to the stage.

The interview is led by Emily Hardegree and runs about 15 minutes.

Staging Shakespeare – Video

Staging Shakespeare-Audio

This interview is based on a live chat with Eric in 2004 and is accompanied by slides from the Abilene Shakespeare Festival. If you have trouble with the video, you’ll find a transcript of the interview below.

Staging Shakespeare transcript

Most students come to college with some familiarity with the plays of William Shakespeare, but often these previous experiences were with tragedies. What many of these students find surprising then is that the immortal Bard, the Sweet Swan of Avon, could also tell a joke. As a young playwright, Will was actually quite fond of them, writing almost as many comedies as tragedies and histories combined. He enjoyed laughing at the madness of love, puncturing self-conceit, and wordplay, lots of wordplay. Shakespeare's early comedies like A Comedy of Errors and Midsummer Night's Dream are light, airy confections dependent upon puns and mistaken identity; later in his career William began to develop more complicated, layered forms of comedy that balanced festivity with solemnity, young love with menace, light with shadow, but more on that later. For now, take a few minutes to read Susan Snyder's introduction to The Genres of Shakespeare's Plays (labeled “Session 1”) and then return to this assignment to complete the exercise below.

Shakespeare's Genres – Session 1

Genre in the Video Store Exercise

Even if you've never used the word “genre” outside of an English class, you've no doubt had passionate debates on the subject while standing in the aisles of a video store. You can't walk into a Blockbuster without overhearing the couple next to you discussing which movie they'll rent: he wants something with a car chase and she wants something sweet but not too sad. Questions of genre are a familiar part of video-store culture, influencing every part of the ritual down to the organization of the store itself.

Before class, list as many broad types of movie as you can, starting with the basic categories and then dividing this list into subgenres if possible. These categories are always just behind our first response to a new movie. When someone says they liked or didn't like the new Julia Roberts movie, they are silently comparing it to other films she has starred in or other favorite romantic comedies. To adapt Susan Snyder's observation,

In recognizing such habits as [improbable plots and witty dialogue in a romantic comedy] . . . we construct a notion of a [film's] modus operandi that in turn conditions our reactions as dialogue and action unfold. A sense of the norms of genre guides us through that unfolding: prompting sympathy or detachment, highlighting the significance of what we witness, and raising expectations about what is to come. The [screenwriter/director] may also at times invoke generic codes in order to play against them, refusing to fulfill the expectations he has aroused and thus pointing us in a marked new direction. (“Session 1” )

List 2 or 3 examples of recent films that raise expectations based on genre only to fulfill them or play against them. Then in 2-3 sentences, explain how the audience's understanding of these norms is used or manipulated. We'll return to this conversation in class.

Comic Genres Review

The term Shakespearean Comedy is deceptively singular. No single definition or narrowly-defined genre can contain the 14 plays listed as comedies in the 1623 First Folio, including plays as diverse as Much Ado About Nothing and The Merchant of Venice, The Tempest and Twelfth Night. Neither did Shakespeare draw on a single tradition or set of models, varying his methods as often as his material.

Return to Susan Snyder's The Genres of Shakespeare's Plays web-seminar and read “Session 4.” Pay special attention to descriptions of the festive (or festival) roots of English Comedy. You might list festive characteristics you can reflect on as you finish reading the play.

Shakespeare's Genres – Session 4

Reread Feste's clowning scene with Sir Andrew and Sir Toby from Act 2, scene 3 (1096-1100). Then watch the following clip from a 1996 film adaptation. You probably noticed the similarities between Feste's lyrics and the carpe diem tradition. If the enemy of love in carpe diem poetry is time, in Twelfth Night what are the enemies of comedy or the festive spirit? If specific characters come to mind, what values or ideas do they represent?

Present Mirth clip