Reflective Journal What the Bulter Saw play
Description Reflective Journal Task 2 With close reference to your chosen play from List A, What the Bulter Saw consider the following: • In what ways might the play contain characteristics of comedy, satire or farce? 7 • How might the theories of the comic explored below, be evidenced? Now find precise examples from the text to support your arguments. Focus on: • character type and function • language • stage direction • action • audience complicity (what the audience knows but one or more of the characters does not). The comic As previously mentioned, it is possible to have comic aspects in plays that are not considered comedies. In fact, playwrights often incorporate comedy in ‘serious’ plays in order to provide the audience with a bit of relief. But how are comic moments created? What makes people laugh? If you have ever attempted to write comedy, you will know that it is, ironically , serious business! Though it often feels quite improvisational, the majority of comedy writers have spent time studying and perfecting the craft. It is therefore worth considering what creates laughter in human beings and how this can be incorporated into play making. Theorist Henri Bergson’ s Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic attempts to shed some light on this, and although it was written over a hundred years ago, it is worthwhile considering how applicable his observations are to performative writing. 25 I will highlight a few of his points, and, whilst reading, you should consider whether or not you agree with them. 1. Bergson says that ‘the comic does not exist outside the pale of what is strictly human’ (1911, 3). This means that we only laugh at things that have human qualities. Landscapes may be beautiful or ugly, but not funny. Things and animals are only funny when we detect a human quality in them, for example, clumsiness in a cat, or an arrangement of car headlights that makes it look angry (if, indeed, you would find those things funny!). 2. There is an ‘absence of feeling’ which accompanies laughter (4). We can only laugh at something if we have any emotional attachment to it. For example, if we feel angry about a stage character (in the particular moment of watching) we cannot laugh at him/her. The same goes for a character we feel sorry for – we cannot laugh unless we have emotional distance. 3. Laughter is a social mechanism. As Bergson says, laughter ‘appears to stand in need of an echo’ (5). You will probably have heard the saying‘laughter is contagious’, and Bergson thinks that we are unlikely to laugh when we are on our own. Think about theatre audiences – do people sometimes laugh because others are laughing, even if they don’t quite get the joke? How often do you hear only one person laughing? 4. Bergson claims that laughter comes from observing ‘mechanical inelasticity’ in others (10). What this means is an inability to respond to an obstacle. He uses the example of a man walking down the street who falls because he failed to notice or avoid a rock, or a person who ‘attends to the petty occupations of his everyday life with mathematical precision’ (for example, Malvolio from Twelfth Night), but who, when it becomes clear that a trick is being played on him, fails to adjust his behaviour and therefore falls for the trick. Comedy emerges from a character’s stubborn refusal/inability to change their behaviour in line with changing circumstances. 5. Connected to point 4, the ‘comic character is generally comic in proportion to his ignorance of himself. The comic person is unconscious’. So, if a person is unaware of their flaw, and continues blindly on a path thinking it is the correct way to proceed, they become even funnier. What-the-butler-saw https://www.dramaonlinelibrary.com/plays/what-the-butler-saw-iid-132744