Looking for Laughter

I seem to have an affinity for comedy.

Which is odd, because I'm not a funny person. I was never the class clown or the life of the party, I was always the girl in the corner, reading a book and eating her hair. I suppose I'm not unfunny. I can tell a decent joke. Not very often, but it has been known to happen. My comedy is usually a sneaking sort of thing, most times I won't realize I've made a joke until the words have left my mouth and somebody laughs.

It also affects my writing. I once set out to write a moody dramatic play, with an undertone of cruel sexual politics. By the fifth draft I had a full blown romantic comedy complete with gossipy supporting characters and a happy ending. My admiration for cleverness is partly to blame, even when my characters are in dire situations, I want them to express their anguish with a clever turns of phrase.

It affects my casting, too. Like many little girls, I went from wanting to be a ballerina, to wanting to be a leading lady. I was convinced my Juliet would someday bring audiences to tears. I now realize that if I am ever cast in that play, it will most likely be as the Nurse. I don't really mind being a character actress, not anymore, its a lot more fun to make faces and have hysterics than to smile and look pretty.

It's something I have had to come to terms with, though. When I was a Junior in high school the big play was Pride and Prejudice. I wanted to play Elizabeth, everyone did. Instead I was cast as Mrs. Bennet. I was bitterly disappointed, but in the end I think I had more fun, and got more audience attention than Linnea Eby did. I was especially gratified to hear one of the teachers say to my mother, "Isn't Caitlin normally a quiet girl?"

My Senior year they were doing The Miracle Worker, and I wanted to play Annie Sullivan, I felt I deserved her, too. When they gave the part to a Sophomore and cast me as the Aunt, I was so insulted that I quit the show and went out and got myself cast in a community production of Noel Coward's Private Lives. As Sybil, I got to do two of my favorite things to do on stage: wear period clothes, and have hysterics.

Currently I am acting in a classic farce, called Run for Your Wife.  I don't get to have hysterics, but I do get to wear some lovely period clothes. Rehearsing for this play has got me thinking a lot about how to be funny: deliberately funny, not my usual sneaks up and hits you over the head when you're looking the other way funny. Its a farce, so a lot of the humor comes from misunderstandings. Mistaken identity, and double meanings provide a lot of humor. So does physical pain. I've lost count of the number of times we fall over, fall into things and hit each other. But these things still read, apparently there is no expiration date on the humor of a pie in the face.

Like the double power of pain to make us alternately cringe or cackle, the themes of classic comedy would also be perfectly at home in high drama. Sex, Death, Cheating, Secrets and Lies, Strained Friendships, Ruined Marriages, Homosexual Activity, and Police Investigations. Where is the switch between tears and laughter? Of course much of it is the presentation, but then, the key to making something funny is to play it serious, so, there we are.

If I have made no progress in breaking down the science of humor while rehearsing this play, I have at least remembered how to illicit it. There was ample laughter during the performances opening weekend, and much of it at things we'd actually rehearsed, and not the unaccounted for happenings that make live theater so much fun. One of my biggest laugh lines is a inocent reference to produce. I'm off stage when I deliver it, so I can smile along with the audiances laughter.

I may be not understand comedy, but I do have an affinity for it.