Background information + Content (cultural)
Performance elements
- Farce is a theatre genre that was created during the ‘’Middle Age’’, it had the aim to make people laugh and has a tendency to be vulgar in order to make the performance comic.
- It’s origins come from the Ancient Greece-Romanique, we find traces of them in Aristophane and Plaute.
- Farce means stuffing (which refers to a program with several short pieces with comic scenes). Basically the plot doesn’t have a structure, it’s just little pieces of funny moments and situations that the main character is living.
- Traditional French farce has its roots from Molière and commedia dell’arte however the accepted English version is a bit more than 100 years.
- Farce started off in the 15th century where this term was used to describe the elements of clowning, acrobatics, and caricature. They started by being little bits of jokery inserted by actors into the texts of religious plays, from this, farce spreaded quickly throughout Europe.
- It has been a source of theatre comedy entertaining audiences for generations.
- A comic piece with improbable plots with stereotypical characters and a lot of physical and vocal exaggerations.
- It is regarded as intellectually inferior to Comedy because of its crude characterisations however it has been sustained by its popularity in performance.
- French farce is dominated over slapstick (style of humour which exaggerated physical activity).
- Farce survived for many many generations and it found new expressions in films comedies with Charlie Chaplin
Performance elements
- Setting is a key factor in farce as the protagonist is sometimes at odds with the environment.
- The main character in farce should not belong in the place of action.
- Farce is both physical and verbal humour using character exaggeration by the actor.
- Action of farce is propelled by panic.