October 31, 2010

• Make me Laugh?

  

  Marketing Scripts

   

  The target audience does not matter. The whole world is your audience. Improvising is as natural as putting on the moves or talking. The link between drama and education is improvisation or imagination. Acting as a fabrication of drama, can be developed, harnessed and understood in education, theatre and therapy. People with emotional, mental or other personality disorders; lost in their own fantasies are involved in role-playing; without any regard for the opinions of others; amateur or professional. But, in stand-up and situation comedy, there are many types of laughter.

   

  What makes a person laugh?  Maybe because they are happy or amused. Maybe they are laughing because they are in derision or disdain. They also may laugh when at play, or at something novel say, from a sense of freedom, from the mere joy of living or even at the misfortune of another in slap-stick comedy. So there are many kinds of laughs, all of which are due to some varying causes.

   

  There are probably two main causes for all laughter. One is physical or physiological; the other is emotional or mental. It is always the robust, hearty man who laughs. When we laugh in play, or because we feel good; this is due to a superabundance of energy. This energy can find a ready outlet in no other manner; so finds its expression in laughter and smiles. Comedy situations of any sort, on the stage or screen or in real life, cause laughter because they release this well of resource energy.

   

  There are many kinds of laughs. Starting with a snigger, laughter can also be corny, embarrassed, full-bellied, hypocritical, mocking, polite, sarcastic, sinister, supercilious and sympathetic.¹ All of these types of laughs are due to varying causes as laughter follows. This spring of reserve is loosed when when the sense of the comic individual, the ludicrous or the absurd is touched.

   

  Why does anything strike us as particularly 'funny'? This brings us to the mental factor. Many things do make us laugh merely because they are unusual or novel; different clothes in fashion; someone finding it difficult to perform an action we could easily perform like lifting a light object as heavy; some guy abnormally foolish, ignorant or unaware of a common local knowledge, or from seeing someone else as ourselves, etc.  The source of laughter in all such cases is the same. We feel a sense of superiority over that individual or situation, and laughter arises from our consciousness with superiority. We laugh from strength at weakness because it is ultimately a case of the 'survival of the fittest'. Many start their day with a forced a laugh; just to tighten their face muscles. It is biological in nature.²

   

  Sources: 1. Improvisation by J. Hodgson

           2. New Discoveries in Science by H. Carrington, 1924

   

   

   

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