Summary Of The Play The Shape Of Things

Aristotle defines a tragedy as an "imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself... in a dramatic rather than narrative form" (Poetics). Certainly, there is an action that is serious in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, or conflict that holds a level of severity to it. It is also conducted in a dramatic form as the plot is revolved around the interactions of the characters with each other. The conflict here is the social injustice African-Americans have faced from whites throughout time. The play is a social reflection of social injustice because the characters suffer from the lack of control of their of their lives and music because of their race. The purpose of the play is to delve into

The play Terra Nova opens with the protagonist Captain Robert Falcon Scott, trying to write a letter to the public. However, Scott was having difficulty to do so, as he’s too weak and weary, he seems to have suffered from frostbites in his hand but he continues to write, speaking his words out loud. At the same time Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer also enters the stage, introducing Scott to the members of the Royal Society, who gathered together in honored of him. Amundsen ' introduction of Scott was the first hint to the audiences that Scott was already dead, and his story is told through the journal and letters that were later found.

Christopher Durang has put a lot of dark humor into this play for us to see different sides of everything. From not hearing about things that we do in our regular life to bringing those to the light of everything. With this it's different from other plays it humor on very twisted situation that should be

Successful satirist achieve a balance between amusement and criticism. discuss At its core the purpose of satire it to use amusement to expose humanity’s various vices and shortcomings, and in doing so critique the prevailing social norms and attitudes. Political satire, in particular, humorously engages with the responder to represent a comment on the vices and foibles of the political systems, through an insight in to the ethical ambiguity within the internal machinations of politics. Rob Sitch’s 2008 mockumentary The Hollowmen humorously highlights the clandestine nature of politics , where politicians devalue public merit in order to meet self-serving agendas .

In the play “Doubt: A Parable” by John Patrick Shanley, Sister Aloysius is a headstrong principal at a Catholic school in New York in the 1960’s. She is a person who speaks her mind, and she will take whatever means to ensure that she gets her way and keeps her school running in a manner she deems fit. It seems as if Sister Aloysius is almost afraid of change and new ideas, and she will try her hardest to keep progress from pushing old ideas that she firmly believes in aside.

With comedy being a direct reflection of society it has taken on darker themes from the world that it's influenced by. In modern times of our politically collect world it's become evident that some of this darker comedy is seen as offensive. This type of comedy often addresses and pokes fun of serious topics and issues.This may include disabilities/illnesses, 9/11,the holocaust ,racism, drugs, sexism, murder, and other assortments of other political and social topics that seem to carry a negative connotation and are seen as unmentionables in specific settings. This seems to be especially true in a comedic setting due to the general public's relation to these topics,but what necessarily makes these offensive to an individual and the general

Although Twelfth Night is renowned for its comical nature and cross-dressing, on closer examination it appears that Shakespeare has used this comedy to have a greater effect on the audience than pure humour, supporting Berry’s statement. However, before attesting that Berry is entirely correct, we must evaluate three things: the way in which Shakespeare makes the audience feel ashamed, whether this shame is felt by both contemporary audiences and Elizabethan/Jacobean audiences, and whether shame is, as Berry writes “the ultimate effect”.

social class. Furthermore, many people had suffered as an American and a Negro with the double dislocation of identity and nonidentity living their life through the burden of racial prejudice. Krasner declares that “Parody of racism and the sense of double consciousness in African American life, surface repeatedly in the lyrics of black songs” (320). Thus, we see and hear these lyrics in various musicals in the play, where it deepens the understanding of the music that helps us better understand the message, story, feelings and actions of the characters, which creates meaning to the audience. These songs were sang by the colored people in the musical because it expressed their viewpoint and race. It emphasized the complexity of the positions that black writers and performers had faced to develop their work. We understand the struggles that African American people faced through the words, voice, tone of the black music that expressed the conflict of the colored people. However, Krass states that “White audiences may have found the African American dialect amusing” (320). Altogether, due to these problems about race many black performers used the artful and aesthetic use of parody and double consciousness in song lyrics to express the struggle against the dehumanizing effects of racism that many African American faced. The songs were a way that many people colored people were able to raise awareness and address their issues and concerns that greatly affected them in the

This essay is going to discuss about racism in comedy and in addition to that it is also going to look at whether it is acceptable for comedians to use certain racial words for example when black comedians use the word “Nigger”. Also it is going to look at how different audience put up with this kind of material, but first of all it is going to look at the actual word itself and where in the blue marble that we call earth it originated from.

Over the past 70 years, there has been great change in comedy especially for African-Americans and other Non-American races. During the early days of comedy, many of these people were considered to be minorities during that era. This influenced many comedic stints of that time which over the years have evolved to catch up with the modern day society. Some of these include the humor, the topics discussed and also epithets. Over the years many comedians have emerged from ‘this’ group of minorities and have played a major factor in the evolution of comedy itself and how the different minorities have evolved from being quiet to playing a great part in show casing their lifestyle. Compared to the past, there has been a great change in comedy from the old times of Dick Gregory to the modern times of Aziz Ansari.

In the poetry of Margaret “Stevie” Smith (1902-1971), life and death are constantly being juxtaposed. For Smith, life was usually a painful or tedious experience and death a blessed escape from its misery and futility. Having had a religious upbringing, she is also much preoccupied with God, but cannot accept traditional Christian teaching about redemption and heaven. Death is seen as an end, rather than a beginning and a relief, instead of a gateway to a reward. In “Not Waving but Drowning”, Smith’s philosophy of life as a pointless and sad experience for many people, is focused on the event of a drowning man. In the style of the poem, she writes

Jez Butterworth’s ‘Jerusalem’ creates a comic vision focusing on the ambiguities, turmoil and hypocrisies of the society presented on stage. Butterworth focuses on the characters’ degeneracies in which the form of humour tends to be the exposure of their unruly behaviour and their reluctance to conform to social norms. “The most basic difference between comedy and tragedy lies in its central characters, who are not heroes, and often, as with Shakespeare’s Falstaff, are anti-heroic” The key character Johnny

In the play Twelfth Night, Shakespeare uses dramatic irony to develop the comedic effect in the characters relationships. The use of dramatic irony produces most of the comedic effect by revealing situations and relationships to the audience, but not the cast. Developing the plot with this literary device provides comedic and ironic situations while engaging the audience.

Parodies are usually used when comedy is intended, but sometimes they are also used to reflect much deeper issues. The world Truman Burbank inhabits in The Truman Show (1998) is a parody of the world of the audience of “The Truman Show”, but Truman’s world is just as much the truth to him, as the world of the show’s audience is to them. It can be argued Truman’s world is both a reflection and a refraction of the world of the show’s audience.

Therefore, it is the purpose of this paper to analyze Tristan Bernard’s play titled “I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act” using the formalist approach. “I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act” is a farce about a married-life conversation between Henri and Jeanne that is “…exaggerated to a ridiculous level to create humor–and comment on inflexible human behavior” (Clugston, 2010). Moreover, a farce according to our text is “a comedy; a short play, in which both subtle humor and hilarity are developed through improbable situations, exaggeration and (often) ridiculous antics (Clugston, 2010). In addition, author Irving Howe suggests “the events of farce are quite as probable as those of tragedy” (Howe, 1990). When asked what captured my interest with this particular genre of literature would be the ease and flow of the writing and the use of ambiguity. According to our text, Clugston states that ambiguity is the “use of language that has more than one meaning, creating uncertainty about how to interpret what has been stated” (Clugston, 2010). For example, Jeanne responds to Henri after he complains to her that he doesn’t have fun at the horse races when she comes with him with the following line; “Yes, up the Champs-Elysees together! And have you looking daggers at me all the time! Whenever I do go with you, you're always making disagreeable remarks” (Clugston, 2010). Another reason for the interest in “I’m Going! A Comedy in One Act” simply lies on the foundation of comedy; it was quite