Kategoria BISAC: Performing Arts >> Comedy

From Chaplin's tramp to the Bathing Beauties, from madcap chases to skyscraper perils, slapstick comedy supplied many of the most enduring icons of American cinema in the silent era. This collection of fourteen essays by prominent film scholars challenges longstanding critical dogma and offers new conceptual frameworks for thinking about silent comedy's place in film history and American culture. The contributors discuss a broad range of topics including the contested theatrical or cinematic origins of slapstick; the comic spectacle of crazy technology and trick stunts; the filmmakers who...

One of the undisputed heavyweight champions of American comedy, with nineteen appearances on the Johnny Carson show, thirteen HBO specials, five Grammys, and a critical Supreme Court battle over censorship under his belt, George Carlin saw it all throughout his extraordinary fifty-year career, and made fun of most of it. Last Words is the story of the man behind some of the most seminal comedy of the last half century, blending his signature acerbic...

Script mechanic and sitcom-writing instructor Marc Blake strips down the sitcom into its component parts and provides a one-of-a-kind how-to guide for aspiring writers and media professionals for one of the most difficult and demanding genres on TV.

The book first identifies the known pitfalls in concept, characterization, plotting, and dramatic/comedic writing that cause the thousands of scripts submitted every year to producers to be sent to the rejection pile. Then each component point is illustrated with an example of both the error and with practical suggestions and exercises for...

Characters: 4 females and 1 male

Scenery: Simple set

In a festive mood, the ladies mount another assault on the classics with their stage version of A Christmas Carol. They enthusiastically portray a dizzy array of characters from the Dickensian favorite (and a few which aren't), engineer some novel audience participation while bravely contending with an intrusive PA system and a real Farndale first rap their vocal cords and feet around two original, show stopping songs.

Norman Robbins

Characters: 4 males, 6 females

Scenery: Interior

Months have passed since the ghastly events in Monument House occurred that are related in A Tomb with a View. Mortimer Crayle, the crusty lawyer, and his secretary have gathered the remaining members of the Tomb family at the house, ostensibly to inform this off beat bunch about their inheritance. In reality, Crayle has designs on the estate that necessitate eliminating all Tombs. Fog descends on the gloomy mansion. In the cobwebby corridors things and people are seldom what they seem. Poison is...

Characters: Various males and females, extras

In each of these masterpieces from the authors of Four Plays for Coarse Actors, sets collapse, actors fail to appear and props fall to pieces while the casts carry on, believing that the audience won't notice. Moby Dick is an ambitious attempt to reduce the epic novel to a series of quick fire scenes. The Cherry Sisters, a previously undiscovered Chekhov fragment, is a desperately sincere piece with a teary ending (spoiled by a faulty prop that necessitates a standing death). Last Call for Breakfast is an avant garde play...