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Comedy

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Articles 1 - 12 of 12

Full-Text Articles in Dramatic Literature, Criticism and Theory

Laughter In The Shadows: Navigating Comedy And Tragedy In Much Ado About Nothing, Mary Kelly Nov 2023

Laughter In The Shadows: Navigating Comedy And Tragedy In Much Ado About Nothing, Mary Kelly

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.


Two, Pair: A Modern Menaechmi, Jacob L. Horn Jan 2022

Two, Pair: A Modern Menaechmi, Jacob L. Horn

Theses and Dissertations

Combining tools of faithful translation and liberal adaptation, I have modernized Plautus’s Menaechmi with the aim of recreating the spirit of Plautine comedy for a present-day viewer, focusing on playability. This dramaturgical process is documented in an introductory essay and text annotations, revealing key choices, theoretical considerations, and conceptual concerns.


Direction Of The Imaginary Invalid By Molière Translated By Charles Heron Wall Adapted By Kimberly Dorman, Kimberly S. Dorman Jan 2019

Direction Of The Imaginary Invalid By Molière Translated By Charles Heron Wall Adapted By Kimberly Dorman, Kimberly S. Dorman

All Graduate Projects

This project comprises of the selection, research, casting, adaptation, production and post-production process of The Imaginary Invalid. Documentation and research include adaptation, analysis of the play as a production vehicle for our program, research, script analysis, outcome goals, a record of the production period, and a postproduction evaluation.


Baby Snooks And Daddy: A Little Gal's Journey To Joy And Jell-O, Sofia Luella France Jan 2019

Baby Snooks And Daddy: A Little Gal's Journey To Joy And Jell-O, Sofia Luella France

Senior Projects Spring 2019

A little girl in pursuit of Jell-O can do anything! In this Theater and Performance project Baby Snooks just wants a happy, gelatinous Halloween, but will Daddy’s petty pranks get in the way? Worry not, Baby Snooks saves the spooky day, and finds herself along the way. Come on pumpkin heads! It’s time for a treat!


Review Of Royal Shakespeare Company Production Of Mary Pix’S The Beau Defeated, Retitled The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs. Rich, Aparna Gollapudi Nov 2018

Review Of Royal Shakespeare Company Production Of Mary Pix’S The Beau Defeated, Retitled The Fantastic Follies Of Mrs. Rich, Aparna Gollapudi

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Jo Davies’s reprise of Mary Pix’s comedy The Beau Defeated, Or The Lucky Younger Brother,performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon under the title The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich refocuses the comedy from its original engagement with primogeniture and middling class masculinity towards the female characters. It also diffuses Pix’s Whiggish moralism in Mrs. Rich's portrayal, highlighting instead her energy and verve. Overall, a very successful production, the performance is more Restoration comedy than the transitional work that Pix's play was when it opened in 1700.


Behind The Stakes, Between The Lines, Beyond The Pun: A Critical Deconstruction Of Humor In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, And Other Popular Comedies, Jaime Libby May 2016

Behind The Stakes, Between The Lines, Beyond The Pun: A Critical Deconstruction Of Humor In William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, And Other Popular Comedies, Jaime Libby

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

Humor is a powerful rhetorical device employed at all levels of human discourse—from casual banter to political debate. Still, despite humor’s global prevalence, its historical transgressiveness, and its distinct potential both to neutralize and critically engage highly fraught issues, humans do not often pause to ask how humor works. And what does its working tell us about our humanness? This thesis explores the operation of humor in literature and performance, using tools provided by structuralist, deconstructive, and postmodern critical arenas, to reveal how humor’s fundamental structures invite humans to entertain new perspectives and practice empathy. The study considers irony, the …


Teaching Willmore, James Evans May 2014

Teaching Willmore, James Evans

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640-1830

Teaching Aphra Behn’s The Rover for nearly four decades, I have witnessed a considerable shift in students’ attitudes toward the play, especially toward Willmore. More positive about his character in the 1970s and 1980s, they have had a much more negative assessment since then. The only available video version, the Women’s Theatre Trust production, compounds my pedagogical problem through filming techniques and choice of actor; emphasizing male violence against women, its interpretation parallels feminist criticism of the 1990s. Asking students to examine theater history may lead them to see that Behn does not completely match this ideological paradigm. The original …


Summer Of Shrew, Part 2: Tamed? Really?, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner Jul 2013

Summer Of Shrew, Part 2: Tamed? Really?, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In the second of a four-part series on Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner argues that Shakespeare’s play raises challenging questions about the way we define gender roles, and the answers aren’t as obvious as they might seem.


Almost, Maine: A Director's Journey, Adam S. Crandall May 2013

Almost, Maine: A Director's Journey, Adam S. Crandall

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.


Why Are Comedy Films So Critically Underrated?, Michael Arell May 2012

Why Are Comedy Films So Critically Underrated?, Michael Arell

Honors College

This study explores the lack of critical and scholarly attention given to the film genre of comedy. Included as part of the study are both existing and original theories of the elements of film comedy. An extensive look into the development of film comedy traces the role of comedy in a socio-cultural and historical manner and identifies the major comic themes and conventions that continue to influence film comedy. Ten comedy film case studies are then presented, analyzing the recurring themes and conventions in practice and extracting the existing critical language used in the analysis of comedy film. The final …


A Study Of The Social And Political Implication Of Friedrich Schlegel’S ‘Comedy Of Freude’, Manjit Singh Bhatti Dec 2009

A Study Of The Social And Political Implication Of Friedrich Schlegel’S ‘Comedy Of Freude’, Manjit Singh Bhatti

Masters Theses

Generally speaking, scholarship in the field of Germanistik has taken an interest in Friedrich Schlegel’s early publication, “Vom aesthetischen Werte der griechischen Komoedie” (1794), either because of its perceived influence on German Romantic Comedy [(Catholy 1982), (Kluge 1980), (Holl 1923), (Japp 1999)], or else because of its relevance as an example of Schlegel's still inchoate aesthetic philosophy [(Dierkes 1980), (Behrens 1984), (Schanze 1966), (Michel 1982), (Dannenberg 1993), (Mennemeier 1971)]. As a theory of comedy in its own right, Schlegel’s essay has garnered little attention, in part because of its supposed inapplicability to comedic praxis and at times utopian implications, in …


Oskar Blumenthal And The Lessing Theater In Berlin, 1888-1904, William Grange Dec 2003

Oskar Blumenthal And The Lessing Theater In Berlin, 1888-1904, William Grange

William Grange

OSKAR BLUMENTHAL (1852-1917) was Berlin’s most feared theatre critic in the early years of the new German Reich. He had the audacity of referring to Goethe as “an egghead” who had no understanding of what made plays effective for audiences, and in other critiques he ridiculed Kleist, Hebbel, and other “important” playwrights—prompting an adversary publicly to call him a “one-man lynch mob.” In the 1880s Blumenthal himself began writing plays, and he was so successful that many self-appointed cultural guardians accused him of damaging the German theatre beyond repair. His became the most frequently performed plays on any German stage …