English

A comedy by Jean-Pierre Martinez

Translation by the author

Mark and Peter are actors, who were once friends but haven’t seen each other for years after their friendship turned into a rivalry, both professionally and in their romantic lives. Now one of them has invited the other on the stage of a theatre to rebuild the friendship they lost with their youth. This attempt at a reconciliation will turn into a settling of scores before opening up the possibility of an unexpected collaboration.

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The police comedy or crime comedy blends comedy with a criminal plot often accompanied by an investigation. The humor arises from the wacky nature of the crime or offense in question and its protagonists, as well as the equally wacky character of the detectives leading the investigation.

As its name suggests, romantic comedy is a subtle blend of pure sentimental romance and humorous sitcom. It is therefore a love story that starts off poorly and ends more or less well, exploiting all the elements of humor in the transition from the initial situation to the final situation.

The sentimentality of this type of comedy is not limited to the romantic aspect in the strict sense (the quest or reconquest of a soulmate), but also includes all other possible dimensions of familial love (resolving family conflicts, reestablishing strained relationships, and even rediscovering lost family members).

The humor in this type of comedy is also less pronounced than in pure sitcoms, and it is never completely disconnected from the sentimental plot. The aim is to evoke smiles rather than bursts of laughter, as the emotion is never far away.

The dramatic comedy or dramedy combines the lightness of humor with the weight of tragedy. This marriage between the contingency of comic accidents and the permanence of a dramatic fate results in a dark humor. While the characters are grappling with a purely comedic situation, they each reveal, through their way of dealing with it, the irreducible fractures that characterise and constrain them. While comedy generally has a happy ending, in dramatic comedy, the characters are predestined, like in tragedy, although their fate is less calamitous. As for contemporary french theatre, notable masters of dramatic comedy include the duo Agnès Jaoui and Jean-Pierre Bacri (with works such as « Family Resemblances » or « Kitchen and Dependencies »), Yasmina Réza (« Art » or « God of Carnage »), and Nathalie Sarraute (« For Yes, for No »).

We speak of « play within the play » when the play, scene, skit or sketch has as its theme the theatrical performance itself.

This can lead to a « mise en abyme » (self referentiality): during the play, the stage becomes, for a time, the theatre for another play performed by some of the actors, and to which the other actors playing the role of the audience attend. Shakespeare (Hamlet) and Molière (L’Impromptu de Versailles) both used this technique.

One can also witness a subversion of the codes and conventions of traditional theatre: the fourth wall is broken, the actors play themselves and speak of their personal problems by directly addressing the audience and engaging them; the author, director, stage manager or even the spectators intervene in the show; the actual people, space and time of the performance become the characters, location and time of the show, to the point that the actual spectators eventually no longer know what is fiction and what is reality.

Inaugurated by Eugène Ionesco with The Bald Soprano, Theatre of the Absurd portrays the difficulty of man to match the world he lives in with the grid of interpretation he would like to impose on it. However, there are multiple ways to bring out the comedy of this impossibility for reason to subject reality. Between a world devoid of a priori sense and humanity in search of an illusory meaning to its existence, opens up the bottomless pit of nonsense and absurdity. An absurd statement is a statement that does not account for reality, an absurd behavior is a behavior that has no control over it. Raymond Devos can also be cited as one of the great masters of absurd humor.

I don’t really know what children’s theater is, and to be honest, I don’t subscribe to the idea that one should write specifically for children. What interests children in theater is what allows them to escape the childish world in which they are sometimes confined, in the illusory goal of protecting them. Conversely, theater is primarily aimed at adults who have kept a childlike soul: the ability to dream, to be moved and to be amazed.

It is obvious that some plays, not specifically written for children, are more likely to suit them and please them than others. But it is up to the children themselves to decide, with the help of their facilitators or teachers. And fortunately, their choices sometimes surprise us. Moreover, when we talk about theater for children, what age group are we referring to? Pre-teens and other adolescents, who are ultimately only young adults, do not necessarily have the same tastes and concerns as younger children.

I don’t know if I have written plays for children. In any case, if I have, it was not deliberate, to address this particular audience. However, I do notice that some of my plays are more often performed by children or teenagers than others. This is especially true for my comedy sketches, as they do not require a lot of memorization and concentration over a long period of time, and because they generally rely on an absurd humor that children, in their great wisdom, are very sensitive to.

Sometimes, more surprisingly, plays featuring very adult characters, even elderly people, who are anything but heroes or role models. Children also like to imitate adults, to make fun of their flaws and ridiculousness, which of course do not escape them. So let us allow our children at the theater the pleasure of laughing with us, and even better, of laughing at us.