Rules of Farce

From Sherry Kramer

FARCE*
Farce has three basic attributes:
1. Brutality
2. Unreality--how characters get into situation is improbable
3. Objectivity--puppet master, emotional involvement with characters is lessened. Don’t need to care about the characters. Distance is kept most if not all the time

Of course, unreality is objective and brutality is unreal. To enhance unreality of character, often are put under a spell, drugged, beaten until in a stupor, or drunk
Farce is totally real and totally absurd simultaneously. Characters do not know that they are funny.

Additional elements:
indestructible characters
objects as antagonists, objects often act as main characters
doors--exits and entrances happen swiftly
accessible, easy to enter
crude
characters seldom murdered or badly injured
farce is a laughter releasing mechanism
audience is often privileged, knows more than characters

Farce environment--a seductive world of promises and a malign world of traps.--Albert Bermel
Farce is a destroyer, and detractor--a negating force. Farce is favored by writers in formative years--when they get older, they are attached to stories of union and compassion, rather than dissolution, free sequence, and irrationality. Farce flouts the bounds of reason, good taste, fairness, sanity.

It utilizes two laughter releasing mechanisms--
1. Characters who are only partially engaging
2. improbable situations in which we’re caught up

Often the main character will be outsiders coming into a world, someone who doesn’t fit--but must survive in this world whether they fit or not fit. Outsiders are often responsible for change, making changes and being changed
Slap stick--literally, a blunt wooden stick used in commedia de arte, gave a sharp cracking sound when someone is struck with it--an artificial, heightened sound

In farce, characters seldom get badly injured, and almost never die. Human bodies are sponges for punishment because THE AUDIENCE MUST LAUGH. In modern farce, people do die.

Farce shrinks the difference in consciousness between objects and people. These objects yearn to be used for purposes they were never intended for, and they turn treacherous at every turn. And there is the coming of the machine--a gun is a machine, belonging to an intermediate stage between things and people. Machines are extensions of people, and extension of things. They have assumed in farce some of the tasks of servants and slaves.

A Playwright's Manifesto

I don't have a playwright's manifesto. I have one for teaching, but not playwriting. I was thinking today about what would be in my manifesto, if I had one.

I like the idea of manifestos.

It seems right that a theater artist should have things he or she believes with enough ferocity to nail them to a church door.

To ponder.

Exercise...

For getting feedback on a play.

Have everyone write a list of questions for the playwright AND for the PLAY. They can ask them, they can hand them to you for later.

Caveat: Know that it isn't your job as playwright to answer all of those questions in your rewrite, necessarily...in fact, there's no better way to have a play go flat. But make sure the questions people are asking are the questions you want them asking...that you have their heads turned in the right direction

Exercise...

For getting feedback on your play. Have someone who's just heard the play for the first time address the group in the voice of one of the characters. Have the group ask the character questions. Listen both for the questions being asked, and the way this person who is new to hearing your play chooses to answer those questions

Exercise...

...For seeing what's landing with your play.

Right after you've had your audience read the play, have them either write or tell the story of the play, in story-telling form (ie "once upon a time, there was..." back to you. Listen for what people omit, slide over, where they add their own details and interpretations.