Tragic Comedy
Tragicomedy is a genre that blends elements of both comedy and tragedy. A tragicomedy
can either be a serious play with a happy ending—which is not the case with a
straightforward tragedy—or a tragic play interspersed with moments of humor in order to
lighten the mood.
Examples of Tragicomedy
There are many films which can be considered examples of tragicomedy :
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Juno
Big Fish
The King’s Speech
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Lars and the Real Girl
The Royal Tenenbaums
Sideways
Amélie
Function of Tragicomedy
To describe the dual nature of reality, where both modes can coexist, perhaps
simultaneously. Therefore, the interweaving of both aspects gives both a comic and tragic
view of life. Tragicomedy is mainly used in dramas and theater. Since tragic plays focus
exclusively on protagonists, while comic plays are devoid of focus and concern, therefore
plays that fell between these two categories were developed.
Characteristics
The term became known as a play that did not have enough deaths to be considered a
tragedy, but it could not be categorized as a comedy.
The usage of the term tragic comedy stemmed from the dramas of ancient Greece
Tragic comedy has variety of characters and they show complex dynamic in human
relationship
Events not controlled by hero action
Proloonged uncertainly and unexpected events
History
There is ni complete formal definition of tragicomedy from the classical age
It begun in ancient Greece
Originated with the Roman Comic playwright Plautus
France and England ( 1600 s)
In England
Play violated the unities
More sophisticated playwrights
Closing of the theaters in 1642, and Fietcher’s works were popular in the Restoration
In France
Tragicomedy became reputed as “ a tragedy with a happy ending “ The academy insisted
that all plays must follow Aristotle’s unities.
Renaissance
Definition of tragicomedy was altered to indicate a dramatis work that did not quite fit
into either of two major categories.
Tragicomic works in this time period containe :
Faily serious in tone
Fall into two major categories
Funny moments
Scenes that seem as though it’’ll and in death, but do not
A form that tragicomedy took during this time was pastoral verse.
Postmodern Drama
Postmodern drama presents the condition of the human subject as essentially decentered,
an idea central to the poststructuralist theories. This decentering is suggested mainly in
two ways: by revealing human subjectivity as an ideological construct being constantly
reproduced by cultural and linguistic codes, or by showing it as fundamentally
fragmented, without a core, a self or a past.
The use of language in postmodern drama calls for a special critical attention because
postmodern thought foregrounds the role of language in constructing both the
epistemological discourses and the human subject. Language can never be a neutral
medium for representation, but is rather always already inflected with power relations.
Postmodern techniques
A postmodern theatrical production might make use of some or all of the following
techniques:
1. The accepted norms of seeing and representing the world are challenged and disregarded,
while experimental theatrical perceptions and representations are created.
2. A pastiche of different textualities and media forms are used, including the simultaneous
use of multiple art or media forms, and there is the 'theft' of a heterogeneous group of
artistic forms.
3. The narrative needs not be complete but can be broken, paradoxical and imagistic. There
is a movement away from linearity to multiplicity (to inter-related webs of stories), where
acts and scenes give way to a series of peripatetic dramatic moments.
4. The audience is integral to the shared meaning-making of the performance process and its
members are included in the dialogue of the play.
5. The rehearsal process in a theatrical production is driven more by shared meaning-
making and improvisation, rather than the scripted text.
6. The play steps back from reality to create its own self-conscious atmosphere. This is
sometimes referred to as metatheatre.
Characteristic of postmodern drama
postmodern drama revisits the past ironically. History assumes importance not because it
reveals the past as it was, but because it enables to perceive that our retrieval of it can
never escape the conditions of textuality.
Another characteristic feature of postmodern drama relating to language is its
exploitation of the linguistic indeterminacies and semantic pluralities to the effect of
destabilizing the link between the sign and the referent, the signifier and the signified.
Here too, Beckett can be seen as a powerful representative of the idea.
Examples of postmodern Drama
Griselda Gambaro's Information For Foreigners
Ozono Production's Fuerzabruta
Heiner Müller's Hamletmachine
Dimitris Lyacos's With the People from the Bridge
