Ah, now that I see some signs of life on the blog, let’s try a couple of questions:
1. You know, of course, of two main kinds of drama: tragedy, where there is blood flowing and things end badly (Oedipus the King, Mackbeth, Romeo & Juliet…) and comedy, where we laugh & rejoice at happy ending of troubles (Le nozze di Figaro, Shakuntala, Midsummer NIght’s Dream…)
So, did we watch on Thursday a tragedy or comedy?
The older definitions of tragedy and comedy would say that the show is a tragedy because tragedy (regardless of all the events in the play) must end with deaths while comedy ends in marriage (and for that reason, Merchant of Venice was once considered a comedy….).
Just to clarify the question, do we HAVE to choose between comedy/tragedy?
I don’t know if there is a right or wrong answer to this question, but for me I think it is more of a comedy. Yes one may argue that in the end the boy killed himself and the little girl drown herself in the fountain. But once again, the question is whether this whole thing was real or fiction? I think that it suits more as a comedy since we laughed at the absurdity and comic sense of the actually 6 people looking for an author. Like how Shakespeare has comic relief in tragedy, I guess the killings can be tragic reliefs in comedy, right? Lol, anyways for me it was more comical than tragic.
Like JinWon said, does it have to be tragedy or comedy? I think it is just absurdity, but I guess that fits comedy, right?
I agree with Christopher in that our play was a COMEDY. It actually reminds me of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” in which there was also a play within a play, which is a comedy. The play ended as if nothing had happened without any clear deaths or unhappiness; so, I would conclude that it is rather a comedy than a tragedy. Though, modern plays probably cannot be classified into a particular genre, they are more what we call “Absurdist” plays. They question our reality and confuse us.
This is a play which I cannot categorize as either a comedy or a tragedy. Certainly, there were tragic elements, such as the death of the Boy and the Little Girl. Certainly, the play also possessed some comic elements, such as the over the top acting from the Characters and the Actors. Going back to what Jin said about the classical definitions of tragedy and comedy: While this play would be considered a tragedy if it had ended with a death, we do not know for a fact whether it actually did end in a death. Did the Characters die in reality? Were their deaths fabrications? While the play did lean slightly more towards comedy than tragedy, it cannot be categorized as either, while possessing elements of both.
The best genre to call it, as Chris and Angelica said, is “Absurdist”. The play really played with the boundaries of fact and fiction. Also, I would call it a type of metafiction, in that it uses a theatrical performance to depict and analyze the theater itself.
Its not comedy or tragedy, it is absurdity!!
I mean, especially if we are dealing in the strictest definition of the term, I would say that the play we saw was a tragedy.
By a more liberal definition . . . .well I would still say it’s a tragedy I think. I stand by my idea that the events of the play actually transpired – that the children DID die and that all of the character family’s miseries were real. What is really leading me to this conclusion, I believe, is the fact that they are characters, so although their story may be written, the events don’t actually come true until they’re told.
(This was the idea I tried to articulate in class on Monday, but I couldn’t quite get it out.)