[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Would you say humor is sophisticated and comedy is juvenile?
Author/Writer/Instructor Steve Kaplan: Is humor sophisticated and comedy juvenile? I’m not sure that I would put those in those boxes. I think when we talk about humor we’re basically talking about written prose, Robert Benchley, Sandra Tsing Loh, whoever else is writing comic pieces. In that way because it’s verbal it’s literary, it’s the writing I’m not sure I would say sophisticated but it follows different rules and it follows different dictates. I think comedy is designed to be spoken and performed by human beings. I think that the big difference is that comedy is actor-centric.
In drama, the dramatic writer is trying to make a point. He’s got a theme that he’s trying to develop and even though there are characters in the drama, the important thing is that his speeches reflect the writer’s point of view and it’s literary centric, it’s writer-centric but comedy as first performed 3,500 years ago by the Greeks is an actor-centric art, it’s made to be performed by people who acknowledge that there’s an imaginary event happening but also acknowledge that they’re being seen performing an imaginary event.
Back in the Greek Theater, Greek tragedy and Greek comedy were structured exactly the same, they both had the…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BUY THE BOOK – THE HIDDEN TOOLS OF COMEDY:
The Serious Business Of Being Funny
BUY THE BOOK – THE COMIC HERO’S JOURNEY:
Serious Story Structure For Fabulously Funny Films
BIO:
Steve Kaplan is the author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, best-sellers in their field. He’s working on a third book about writing comedy for television. In addition to having taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale and other universities, Steve created the HBO Workspace, the HBO New Writers Program and was co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre. In addition to development projects for HBO, he has taught workshops online and around the globe and at companies such as DreamWorks, Disney Animation, Aardman Animation, and NBC’s Writers on the Verge. Steve has worked as a script consultant and script editor for productions companies, studios, directors and individual writers.
UPCOMING COMEDY INTENSIVE ONLINE CLASS WITH STEVE KAPLAN
Kaplancomedy.com/product/the-comedy-intensive-online-2023-spring
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