Author: Steve Kaplan

Notes:

• Comedy is an art form with its own aesthethic, rarely agreed upon

• Definition:

  • Comedy is the art of telling the truth about what it’s like to be human
  • Drama helps us dream about who we could be, but comedy helps us live with who we are

• The Comic Equation

  • Comedy is about an ordinary guy/gal struggling against insurmountable odds without many of the require skills and tools with which to win yet never giving up hope

• Tools

  1. Winning
     • Comedy gives you the permission to win
     • Winning = whatever character thinks is positive or achieves goal for him in any situation
     • Do what you need to do in order to “win”
     • Humans aren’t always logical, rational and appropriate - act truthfully
  2. Non-Hero
     • Hero = Characters with every skill necessary to win
     • Non Hero = An ordinary guy/gal struggling against insurmountable odds without many of the required skills and tools with which to win yet never giving up hope
     • Basic fault in many comedies is that the characters simply know too much → Non-hero can’t know
     • Comedy exists in the gap between expectation and reality, “not knowing” of character creates that gap
  3. Metaphorical Relationship
     • Relationship below the surface relationship
     • Character’s unique way of seeing the world
     • Writer’s unique way of seeing a scene aka Frame
     • Characters have to be the master of their own disaster
  4. Positive (or Selfist) Action
     • Everything your character does is in the hope or belief that its going to work and make their lives better
     • Negative action creates dramatic instead of comic moment
  5. Active Emotion
     • The emotion that naturally occurs to the performer simply being in the situation is the right emotion
  6. Straight Line/Wavy Line
     • Is
       • One who does see and one who doesn’t
       • One blind to or creating the problem, and the one struggling with the problem
       • The essential dynamic of comic focus, not character (shifts between characters based on focusing in the scenes)
  • Script Dev
  1. Archetypes
     • Comedia Dellarte - italian 1500s theater form with simple premise and then improvised → Relying on distinctive character types
       • Implication?
         • Character creates plot
         • Character creates action
         • Character creates movement
  2. Comic Premise
     • A lie that imagines an impossible or improbable world that could never happen - but what happens next?
     • Once the premise is established, you cannot tell another lie
     • All actions flow honestly and organically from the premise, based on the character
     • Characters are brought on through need and theme
     • Premise is the engine, theme is the rudder
     • Characters determine Events and Structure, Events and Structure should not dictate character
     • Other characters’ needs are as strong as the main character’s