Tragedy and comedy
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007I’m reading Walter Kerr’s wonderful book, Tragedy and Comedy.
He writes, “Tragedy seems to me to be an investigation of the possibilities of human freedom. Whatever is free about man is examined, given work to do, invited to assert itself and to assert itself utterly, ‘I shall follow this thing to the end.’….The end is not known. The limits of human freedom are not known.”
When I observe people answering the questions, I’m struck by three drastically different types of reactions. The first kind of reaction is from the person who answers the questions with a view towards what might be possible. When asked, ‘What would you like to get from saving $2K that’ll make you go wow?’ she responds, ‘To go back to school.’ When asked, ‘What would you like from working?’ she answers, ‘respect, money and personal time.’ This is the heroic approach. Respondents feel inspired, and often act to make their possibilities real. Nothing is more deeply satisfying to me.
The second kind of reaction is from a person who answers questions feeling stuck. When asked, ‘What would you like to get from saving $2K that’ll make you go wow,’ she responds, ‘More money.’ When asked, ‘What would you like from working?’ she answers, ‘A good job.’ Very soon, she breaks down laughing and also, if the laughter is intensely frustrated enough, grimacing and sobbing. The need for possibility is present, but shackled and restrained. Comedy, as Walter Kerr clearly shows, comes from feeling limited.
The third kind of reaction is what Peter Brook in his book The Empty Space calls ‘deadly.’ When something “not only fails to elevate or instruct, it hardly even entertains….securely, so comfortably and so slyly….they are supposed to be the best….yet secretly, we find it excruciatingly boring…..” that is deadly. Vague answers, clever answers, and over-analysis result in deadly answers, useless. Often when people answer questions with their friends watching over their shoulders, they answer to entertain. As someone once said about improv theater, if an audience member suggests a theme for a scene which instantly gets a big laugh, such as, when asked for a location, ‘bathroom,’ it is probably going to make for a boring scene. The same is true for these answers. If an answer immediately entertains, it’ll probably make boring questions.
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