My wife and I went to see my kid’s high school play yesterday - The Kentucky Cycle, a drama tracking 2 feuding families in eastern Kentucky over a couple of centuries. This play was so over-the-top, at some point I found myself laughing at each new outrageous development. I don’t know, maybe it was after the 2d or 3d rape, or somewhere between the genocide and fratricide, but I remember my wife kicking me when I hooted as the preacher snapped the little kid’s neck.
Suffice it to say my wife and I gave it differing reviews. I thought it a hoot. It was so preposterous, and the high school actors totally ate up the scenery. But my wife didn’t think that an adequate explanation.
I found it difficult to put into words why I enjoyed the play, given that its subject matter was so unremittingly bleak. I know there is supposedly “a thin line between tragedy and comedy,” but do you have any other thoughts/experiences about finding humor in intentionally dramatic theater?
To the OP, good Lord, if I were a Kentuckian, I’d be offended by that play UNLESS it were a parody! Fortunately, I’m an civilized Hoosier so I know that the play is an accurate depiction of my Southern neighbors! I’m with you, except I would be falling out of my chair guffawing!
I thought I was the only one! And it made a noise when he hit the propeller, too. It just about killed me.
The truth is that tragedy is very funny if ineptly performed. You’re supposed to take the circumstances of tragedy very seriously, but if they’re off, you lose sympathy for the characters and the situation and it becomes ridiculous.
“Comedy is a dead art form. Tragedy- now that’s funny.” -Bender from Futurama
Not right offhand, but I wish we’d gone with you guys instead of going to the high school production of Grease we saw last night. Christ, it was awful. If the fourth-grade production of The Nutcracker is equal to one star, I’d give this show a half.
Last weekend we watched Reservoir Dogs, and I started cracking up when Michael Madsen started dancing around with his razor. The rest of my family thought me seriously twisted, but I thought it so outrageous it was funny.
I personally think the Kentucky Cycle is brilliant, but it is meant to be 7 hours long and performed over a full day. If a high school was performing it, I’m guessing some pretty serious revisions/cuts were made.
Occasionally, Stuck in the Middle plays on the Muzak at work. Then I find a co-worker who also saw the movie & complain to them about how my ear hurts.
The following is right on topic if you just think about it the right way.
I laugh at children’s pain. I’m a very bad person.
About a year ago, this kid about five years old was running past my house and fell. He started crying. That wasn’t funny.
His dad was nearby and asked “Harry, what happened?”
Harry looked up, and said in the saddest, most pitiful wailing voice I have ever heard, “I got a… OOOOWWIIIIEEEEE!”
And for some reason I just, cracked, up. It was just something about how the kid’s tone communicated something about how this was absolutely the worst tragedy that had ever befallen anyone ever before in the history of history. Like, this was serious. (And to be clear, no, he was not seriously hurt–he was up and playing a few minutes later.)
I don’t know, for some reason it just cracked me up. Because I’m evil or something I guess?
And it wasn’t a one time thing. Just last week I laughed at a six year old saying over and over again “It’s so painful! It’s so painful! It’s so painful!” as she nursed some kind of “owie” on her foot. She was just being so… demonstrative. I had to leave the area before someone saw me for the cruel fuck that I apparently am.
I hope this is close enough to on-topic not to be seen as an attempted hijack.
When I was in high school there were several of us who enjoyed going to movies that were serious dramas or melodramas or even horror movies, and waiting until the key moment when the tension was about as high as we expected it would get, and, as a group, just bust out laughing and whistling.
There was even one guy (from another school but about the funniest kid in town) who would get to that same point in the movie and yell out something like:
“Never mind the mules, just load the wagon.”
or
“Take me out coach. I’m bleeding.”
But the best one I can remember came from a little old lady sitting behind me at the theater. It was in the Roger Moore James Bond Live and Let Die when Bond is trapped on a little island in this moatlike place with dozens of gators or crocs swimming around and obviously intent on having some fine British cuisine. So Bond notices that the crocs are lined up and that they form a little bridge to the mainland so he proceeds to run across their backs to safety.
The little old lady just said (barely loud enough to hear), “Shit.”
I laughed at that, too. It was so absurd and over-the-top.
Never made it far enough into Titanic to see the dude hit the blade, but from what I did watch, I cracked up laughing at Leonardo’s line “I’m a tumbleweed, Kate (or whatever her name was), just tumblin’ along…”. Not exactly a tragedy, but still, comedy when it wasn’t intended as such.
They did (parts of) the first 6 or 9 plays in the cycle. Even with cuts, it ran some 2:40.
I’m not expert on what is or is not “brilliant” theater. Obviously someone agrees with you, as it won a Pulitzer, but it struck me as pretty heavy handed and over the top. I’m not sure there was a single white male character who wasn’t a complete bastard. And the women and minorities were pretty uniformly stoic victims. Gee, you think the playwright is trying to get something across there?
The first main character:
-describes killing his first man as a child by stepping on an injured man’s neck;
-kills his master to escape indentured servitude;
-shoots a man to get involved in selling guns to the indians, then stabs his partner to impress the indians;
-gives smallpox infested blankets to the indians while taking their land;
-kidnaps and rapes a squaw to form a family to work and pass on his land;
-hamstrings her when she tries to run away;
-kills a baby girl she bears him as he wants only sons;
-buys and rapes a slave, and describes his plan to act as stud to breed a line of fieldhands;
-tells his son that he will never leave his property to him as he is a halfbreed.
That’s just one character. At this point, his son stabs him, starting off a whole new generation of fun.
The director kinda has a track record for pushing the envelope.
Like I said, I enjoyed the play, in large part because it was so unlike anything I expected to see on a HS stage.
My son was a cowardly, incompetent, murderous confederate officer, whose own troops drowned him onstage. What a hoot!
Quoted for truth. I nearly died trying not to squeal wih laughter when I saw a Catholic high school production, written by the drama teacher no less, of the Passion of Christ.
During the flogging I was trying desperately to hold in the peals of laughter, then for the crucifiction, the lights went out - all dramatic, yes sir! - and in the pitch dark you heard pounding and Jesus-whimpers. Only instead of sounding like hammering nails, it sounded more like they were thunderously stomping Christ’s chest wearing jackboots.
The attempt was so over-the-top with such hamfisted acting, that it came across more like a sarcastic lampoon. Really, if I didn’t know that their intentions were ernest, I would have thought they were making fun of the death and resurrection.
ETA: Honestly, I was starting to get pains from holding in the laughter. Ever hiccup when you’re already holding your breath and your lungs are extra-full? It was that kind of hurting.
I’m with you, except I would be falling out of my chair guffawing!