How to write a farce (gulp!)

I have been thinking a lot about farce recently.  We need a script for our adults’ theatre workshop next summer and comedy seems the way to go (it being the summer and all that). But how do you write a funny play? Now there’s a question (and a half).
In the name of research, I’ve been re- watching some of the episodes from “Fawlty Towers” in the hope that some of the genius will rub off on me. So things I have gleaned about a good farce:

• it revolves around a simple central idea - in "Fawlty Towers" the central theme is usually summed up in the title ("The Kipper and the Corpse", "The Hotel Inspectors", "Basil, the Rat") - and that simple idea is worked and re-worked in all it's permutations throughout.
•  the plot itself is serious (tragic even?); it is the audience that finds it funny
• similarly, the characters are funny (to us) because they are out-of-their-depth in unusual situations, not because they are comic in themselves (in fact, they ring very true-to-life)
• there is something at stake (which is very important to the characters - move that body! find that rat! - even if it is ridiculous to the audience); the more that's at stake, the crazier they act.
• much of the comedy comes from lies the characters tell (usually Basil to his wife Sybil, but John Cleese's character also lies to guests and employees alike as the need arises). The lies pile up and contradict each other and the tension escalates (all of which is painful to the characters involved but hilarious to the audience)
• pace is vital: the pressure builds continually and never lets up (this leads to panic in the characters but is key to the comedy for the audience)

So, all in all, a doddle! 

Summer 2012: Eeks! What play are we going to do next?!?!

When I'm up to my eyeballs in a play, there is always a moment of panic. Are there any more ideas out there?! I become so attached to the play we're doing, the idea of coming up with a new play for next year seems impossible. but somehow, once the adrenaline has died down and the performance is behind us..... a new idea always does pop up.

Obviously, you need a theme that will capture the interest of the kids taking part. So far we've done monsters (Where The Wild Things Are), dragons and pirates (Puff The Magic Dragon) and ghosts (The Blood-Chilling Curse of the Old House on the Hill). And this year..... it's going to be aliens!

This theme lends itself to a children's theatre workshop on lots of levels. It is instantly appealing (especially to rowdy boys) and it has great dramatic potential:

• you can have fun with the costumes and props (lots of potential for kitsch comedy)
• there is an abundance of sources for inspiration: Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr Who, Flash Gordon... to name but a few
• there is a lot of great (themed) music out there: films like Apollo 13, Star Wars, Star Trek, the Alien series
• and (our pet theme!) outer space is ideal for black light! All those glow-in-the-dark planets!

 
As soon as we fix on this theme, my mind is buzzing with ideas. We can do a parody of the 1969 moon landing (and get Armstrong's famous "smallstep/giant leap" phrase all mixed up perhaps?)... we can have hula-hooping kids as blacklight saturns (hula hooping being the lastest craze with my daughters)... what the heck, we can do an alien version of Romeo and Juliet!

As usual, one play is hardly behind us, there are eleven months to go before our next workshop and I'm already looking for inspiration!

Getting going on the staging...

 

When we're just getting going on a new project, we spend a while looking around, getting inspired. For our production of "Where the Wild Things Are" we broke the story up into scenes:

• Max's bedroom
• the forest
• the ocean
• the island
• the journey home

We knew we wanted to represent these scenes in as vibrant and visual way as possible. But we also knew we wanted to do it without any traditional scenery, using the kids (and props) to do the job instead.

As everything takes place in Max's room, we decided to use the bed as the one central element and have everything else pulled on and off stage, out of boxes, whipped out from behind the curtains by the kids as needed. So, things had to be portable, easy to take out and put away. (As an example, the blue blanket on the bed became a large, circular sea when pulled of in the sea scene).
 
To get inspired, we looked at a lot of photos - photos of everything and anything (not just of trees!), as you never really know what's going to spark off the idea.

For the Forest Scene, for example, we looked at Maurice Sendak's illustrations:



and photos of real life forests:

http://free-desktop-backgrounds.net

http://mominchapelhill.blogspot.com
 

And these definitely gave us the feel of what we were after: muted greens, hanging foliage... We experimented with long lianas, made out of trussed up binbags, held up by the kids but there wasn't enough feeling of 'density' about the forest, so we kept looking.

Strangely enough, it was this photo, of a piece of performance art, that triggered the final idea:

http://www.moussemagazine.it/blog/?p=6392

We took long stripes of lining material in different shades of green and sewed off cuts of material in muted greens and browns to the underside. When the kids pulled them across the stage and then held them up, Max's bedroom was suddenly transformed into a gloomy forest.


Image by Lisa Saeboe via FlickrThe younger members of the group,the 3, 4 and 5 year olds, weaved in an out of the 'trees', adding a dash of magic.

Got any staging ideas for representing a forest? We'd love to hear them!

Related articles

• Fluidity Of Content And Design: Learning From Where The Wild Things Are (uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com)
• Maurice Sendak releases new book at age 83 (cbc.ca)
• Puppetry in the cinema (filmspotter.wordpress.com)