ebook img

The Art of Comedy Writing PDF

139 Pages·1997·0.6 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview The Art of Comedy Writing

First paperback printing 2011 Copyright © 1997 by Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conven- tions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State University of New Jersey, 35 Berrue Circle, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854-8042. www.transactionpub.com This book is printed on acid-free paper that meets the American National Stan- dard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Library of Congress Catalog Number: 97-6163 ISBN: 978-1-56000-324-3 (cloth); 978-1-4128-1489-8 (paper) Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berger, Arthur Asa, 1933– The art of comedy writing / Arthur Asa Berger. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-56000-324-3 (alk. paper) 1. Wit and humor—History and criticism. I. Title. PN6147.B476 1997 808.7—dc21 97-6163 CIP Contents Preface vii Acknowledgements ix 1. Comic Techniques in Dramatic Comedies 1 2. The Braggart Captain: Miles Gloriosus 51 3. Make What You Will of Comedy: Twelfth Night 65 4. No Trusting to Appearances: The School for Scandal 83 5. The Devices of Absurdity: The Bald Soprano 97 6. Beyond Devices 111 Bibliography 119 Name Index 123 Subject Index 125 Preface This little book is not designed to take the joy out of your life or to prevent you from ever laughing again. If it has that effect, and you fi nd that you are unable to laugh without numbers or strange terms (to be explained later) popping into your head, please forgive me. I didn’t mean to destroy your sense of humor. A thousand pardons. It was an unfortunate accident. What The Art of Comedy Writing does is show you how comedy writ- ers create and have created humor. My argument is relatively simple; I claim that there are forty-fi ve techniques (no fewer, no more) that comedy writers and all humorists have used, do use, and must use—to generate humor. The book will be of use to anyone interested in humor. It is meant to help playwrights, television writers, novelists, fi lm scriptwriters, and stand-up comics who want to create humorous material. It will be of use to anyone who wants to be funny or create humorous material for whatever purpose. In addition, it will be useful to scholars from many disciplines and others who like humor and are curious about how it is created. If you know how writers and comedians create humor, you can study and analyze the humorous works they have created. For example, you can use the techniques to see how Shakespeare evolved as a comedy writer—or Neil Simon, or whoever strikes your fancy. You can use the list of forty-fi ve techniques for sociological investiga- tions of what kind of humor Americans, Germans, Japanese, or members of any culture or subculture like (that is, which of the techniques tend to be the dominant ones they use and prefer). I have used these techniques for a number of years in teaching courses in comedy writing at San Francisco State University and know, from ex- perience, that writers can learn to apply these techniques and adapt them for various purposes—whether it be a play, a monologue, or a humorous radio or television commercial. These techniques work! vii viii The Art of Comedy Writing And I’ve found that when my students learn these techniques, they are able to write some excellent scripts. There is one requirement: if you are going to use these techniques, you’ve got to have a sense of humor. Let me offer an analogy. I recently watched a marvelous television docu- mentary on Flamenco dancing. The dance teacher said “…there is one fundamental requirement. If you want to be a Flamenco dancer, you’ve got to have a sense of rhythm. If you don’t have rhythm, no amount of teaching can turn you into a good Flamenco dancer.” The same applies to comedy writing. If you don’t have a good sense of humor, if you don’t like to laugh (and don’t have the desire to make other laugh), if you don’t have a feel for the absurdities of life, if you don’t have a comic sensibility—I don’t think this book will help you learn how to write good comedy or analyze humor very well. But if you do have a sense of the ridiculous, you can learn how some of the greatest writers of comedies have generated humor in their plays. The fi rst chapter of The Art of Comedy Writing lists the forty-fi ve tech- niques of humor and offers examples of how various playwrights have used these techniques. I make use of material from many playwrights—Plautus, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, Tom Stoppard, Trevor Griffi ths, and Eugene Ionesco. In the four chapters that follow, I analyze four classic comedies (from Roman comedies to the theater of the absurd) in an effort to show that my forty-fi ve technique are not confi ned to modern works or any particular style of writing plays. I believe this book uniquely offers writers and those interested in humor in general an anatomy of the techniques of humor and provides writers and critics with a sizable repertoire of techniques they can use in their work. I see this book being used in courses in creative writing, comedy, and humor in literature departments, writing departments, communications departments, broadcasting and media departments, humanities departments—wherever there is an interest in humor and in the creative process. Acknowledgements I would like to express my grateful appreciation to the following publishers who were kind enough to allow me to quote from plays they published: Grove/Atlantic, Inc. for Eugene Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, Tom Stoppard’s Travesties, and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, and to Faber & Faber for Tom Stoppard’s Travesties and Trevor Griffi ths’s Comedians. ix

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.