Week 1: What is Comedy/Theories of Humour/ Sketch Comedy
Link to sketch: https://youtu.be/riIheYimcsI
The sketch I wrote for this week centres around a president being allocated a sensitive bodyguard. For this work I decided to showcase incongruity, which in this case, the element of surprise was to have the selected bodyguard be small and sensitive as opposed to the traditional expectations of a standard member of security.
Following one of this week’s readings, “From Dionysia to Hollywood: An Introduction to Comedy’s Long (and Bumpy) Road” , Audissinio and Wennekes state that “the initiating cause of humour is not the debasement of someone but the detection of some disruption of our expectations” (Audissinio, Wennekes, 2023).
Inspired by this concept, I wanted to write something that was a little absurd as it would help throw audience expectations off. Furthermore, I think that this theory was a great tool to use in terms of beginning to write and understand comedy, as the element of surprise can sometimes cause people to have a humorous reaction.
I wanted to combine this theory with having a character that was really sad as it would add to the absurdism of the sketch. Whilst not initially great on paper, the idea of a sensitive guard does respond to this concept, and I attempted to interject random lines of dialogue that the security guard says throughout the sketch to further disrupt the flow between the other two characters.
For this week, I wanted to base my inspiration off some of my favourite online creators who create ‘absurdist’ sketches, specifically comedians Keegan Tindal and Chloe.Longname. An aspect I really like about their writing style, is that it includes quick paced back and forth dialogue which is reinforced through editing. Due to this specific sketch style, I believe moments of silence, awkwardness, and/or anything that differs from the sketch’s original pace, allows for certain lines of dialogue to stand out to audiences, and I like to think that jagged pace in sketches can link to Audissinio’s and Wennekes’ Incongruity theory.
Inspiration:
@keegantindall School was rough