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Nonliterary storytelling in Vulgar Comedy

Theatre started from the need and the lust of telling stories (See HERE). Maybe even before our language was fully developed (See more HERE). We can anyway be sure that theatre was played long before we started to write and … Read the rest of this entry

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Physical Theatre in Vulgar Comedy

It is not just because Vulgar Comedy originally played for an audience that could not read that most of it is based on a physical, visual theatre. It has more to do about effectiveness in the storytelling. Just like in … Read the rest of this entry

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A definition of Low Comedy

What is considered “low” in comedy is when we laugh at basic things like life and death. Funny sex, insults, excrement, violence, gluttony, social rebellion and so on are expressions of the comical side of life and death. While the … Read the rest of this entry

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Low Comedy in Vulgar Comedy (Part 1)

Well, just as the name Vulgar Comedy indicates it is also vulgar, in both senses, obscene or crude and popular. That it is also called low has to do with the fact that the Church and the elite has always … Read the rest of this entry

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Low Comedy in Vulgar Comedy (Part 2)

But except from that about “the material-bodily lower” (See PART 1), Mikhail Bakhtin also states that common people at the time neither trusted seriousness nor people who were serious. They were a threat since the only ones that benefited from … Read the rest of this entry

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Early religion

As an example of how religion and the relations between gods and the people (HERE I’ve written about the impact it made in Scandinavian theatre) has changed we can study the story about Noah and the deluge. The first time … Read the rest of this entry

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Lust in Vulgar Comedy

I would say that lust is the most important component in Vulgar Comedy and that it is what combines all genres that it includes. As I have stated before, it was lust – the lust for telling stories, for playing … Read the rest of this entry

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Spex

Spex is a very Scandinavian form of Vulgar Comedy. It only exists in Sweden and Finland. The word itself is nineteenth century slang for spectacle (spektakel in Swedish). It started in the Swedish universities around 1850 as a parody of … Read the rest of this entry

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The Laboratory of Hallucinations

This is part of a Grand Guignol show I was in 2003 called, in translation, “An evening of terror and laughter”. Grand Guignol as a form has its both funny and terrifying sides, not to mention that it is splatter … Read the rest of this entry

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What we really know about Commedia dell’Arte

It is interesting to read how many maestros define exactly what Commedia dell’Arte is and what is not, or how students and scholars want dogmatic truths about what Commedia dell’Arte, when we really know so little about it from its … Read the rest of this entry

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