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Comedy Script
Ideas
ON WRITING & DIRECTING - by G.L. Horton
JH wrote: It made me think of a funny script idea. Familiar
with the stories of Japanese Soldiers who kept fighting the War
up to twenty years after it finished, I have this character who
defends ~something~. Keeps the faith. The ~something~ should be
as obtuse and arcane as possible. With the character popping up
all over the place to defend against "slights".
I actually began work on a script like this. Didn't work. As
a SNL sketch, a Monty Python "bit" in Spamalot-- or
best of all in a subplot in a sprawling Elizabethan-structured
play-- it works very well. (Shakespeare's Pistol, Fuellen, Dr.
Caius; half of Jonson's cast lists...) Big problem with tidy
small cast "modern" plays-- there's no room in them
for such Comedy of Humors-- the one-track character is delightful
and instructive when s/he pops in and disrupts the patterns
of ordinary life, but tedious and annoying in a 2 hour 3-6 character
"realistic psychological" evening. Worse, IMHO, in
works of Absurdism or Satire. I think that when such characters
show up successfully nowadays, they tend to be Evil Obsessives
rather than Harmless Cranks, and the play a downward spiral
as the ordinary characters are sucked into the all-or-nothing
vision. (5/11/05)
Archives—Essays and Commentary
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