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 In the world of live comedy, comedy theater is refreshing. Instead on comedians ranting about their own lives, audiences can sit back and enjoy a story - watch characters, look at sets, listen to music, a whole production! In one night, patrons can be transported to another place, another time, whether it’s in Athens, watching four young lovers get mixed-up in fairy politics in Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” or a battle-of-the-sexes in George Bernard Shaw’s “Man and Superman.” Despite the advent of radio, cinemas and television, people are still flocking to the theater, enjoying real live entertainment that can’t be replaced by technology. Whatever type of humor you enjoy - satire, black, screwball, romantic, high-brow, farce, restoration - you’ll surely find what you’re looking for with the various productions around the country:
As with many forms of entertainment in the west, comedy theater has its roots in ancient Greece. Comedy was used to influence people and voters in politics, as comic poets used humor in discourse, as well as political satire, to ridicule a person who was corrupt, and eventually made its way to the stage, in satyr plays like Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, still a popular play AND topic today.
There were many forms of comedy theater between the ancient Greeks and today - farce, comic opera, surrealist comedies, musical comedies, citizen comedy, comedy of intrigue. However, the years 1660 to 1710 saw it’s own golden age of theater comedy and was given its own name - the “Restoration Comedies” Previously, Puritan laws had banned any sort of secular entertainment, but when these laws were lifted, comedy theater once again flourished. The King’s Company and Duke’s company were the official theater companies sanctioned by King Charles II, who was a lover and patron of the arts, particularyly comedy theater (which he encouraged to be bawdy and explicit.) Elaborate theaters were set up, with advanced technology when it comes to sets, music, and effects. The performers of these times were thought to be the first celebrities of their time - Elizabeth Barry, Thomas Betterton and Neil Gwynn were just some of the names that pulled audiences to certain productions (and not the story or playwright themselves.) George Villiers,The Rehearsal (1671), John Dryden, Marriage a la Mode (1672) and William Wycherley, The Country Wife (1675) were some of the more famous comedies of the time.
Today, The Great White Way (Broadway) is every playwrights’s goal and dream. Staging a play in the most famous theater district in the world truly signifies that they have truly made it. Neil Simon is one of the most celebrated and famous Broadway theater comedy playwright, and even today his plays are still widely staged all over the world. Before becoming a playwright, he was in the army, wrote for TV and for comedian Sid Ceasar. It was in the 60s that he started his rise to fame, following one play after another on broadway - Come Blow Your Horn, Little Me, Lost in Yonkers (which won a Pulitzer Prize), Odd Couple, Sweet Charity and Barefoot in the park, the last three of which played simultaneously in 1966. He became even more popular in the 70s with The Sunshine Boys, They’re Playing Our Song, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues and multi-awarded play The Goodbye Girl. These days, many off-broadway and off-off broadway productions are experimenting with various genres and forms, but perhaps it is still the comedies which audiences love. |
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