Phoebe Stein Davis
Detours Senior Editor Phoebe Stein Davis asked award-winning playwright Rebecca Gilman to reflect on the role humor plays in her work -- productions that treat the most serious and dark topics, from racism to murder and stalking. Gilman offers unique insight into her plays and also into the place for humor in today's theater and society.
Your plays have been called "provocative," "progressive," and "issue-oriented." Do you think these words accurately describe your work? Would you also call your plays "funny"?
I think the first two plays of mine to receive any attention -- Spinning Into Butter and Boy Gets Girl -- could be described as issue-oriented plays. I started with a theme with both of those plays whereas I usually start with characters or situations. I don't think any of my other plays are issue-oriented, really, but once people get an idea about you as a writer it's hard to shake that. I do like to think of myself as a "provocateur." And I mean that in a completely French sense, in that I like to wear berets and smoke Gitannes and parade around my apartment lip-synching to Yves Montand records. And some of my plays are funny, I think, but others are just downright depressing. I try to alternate.
Do you consciously use humor in your work?
I do try to include humor in most of what I write. What usually happens though, is that the bits I think are hilarious meet with dead silence from the audience, while the parts I think are extremely poignant and profound cause the audience to laugh so hard they fall out of their chairs. I used to be bothered by this but what I found was that a lot of the laughter came from the audience's identifying with the characters. It was kind laughter, for a lack of a better way to put it. But I still laugh at the parts I find funny and actors in my plays always tell me they know when I'm out there, because I'm the only one laughing at my own jokes.
What role does humor play in your exploration of such dark topics as racism, stalking, poverty, and murder?
I subscribe to the Mary Poppins "spoonful of sugar" philosophy of playwriting. I think that a lot of the subjects I explore could make for some pretty relentless drama and while there's certainly a place for relentless drama I think that audiences simply get worn out if they're not given some room to breath. I think the proper amount of laughter can diffuse the tension in a play and allow the audience to sort of sit back and get ready for the next idea or conflict.
In my play Spinning Into Butter, which deals with racism on a small college campus in Vermont, I tried to strike a balance between a comedy of manners and a serious exploration of white racism. But I worked very hard to make sure that the comedy wasn't simply a diversion -- that the ideas of the play were still being explored, although satirically. I think that the subject matter actually allowed for that. In my play The Glory of Living, however, which tells the story of a young woman who becomes a killer at the behest of her abusive husband, there's nothing funny going on. So a lot depends on the material.
Would you consider your plays "black/dark comedy"? How do you define that term?
My plays have been described as dark, and funny (and vapid and incompetent, but we won't go into that) but in spite of that I don't think they're black comedies. I would say a black comedy starts with a dark subject and tries to make it comedic whereas I seem to go at it from the opposite direction. I usually set out to write a comedy and it quickly becomes tragic. I've twice tried to write romantic comedies and the one turned into a play about stalking and the other turned into a play about prostitution and shattered dreams. So. Don't know what that says about me.
Do you see a role for humor in theater today? Is this a vein that has been mined/or is being mined in contemporary theater?
Absolutely I see a role for humor today. First of all I'm not one of those beret-wearing, Gitannes-smoking, Yves-Montand-lip-synching artistes who think that if it's not existential it's crap. I love a good comedy as much as the next guy and I see nothing wrong with entertainment for entertainment's sake. But the comedies I love best are ones that are smart and insightful and that poke fun at sacred cows. I get a huge kick out of the Moss Hart/George S. Kaufman comedies like You Can't Take it With You or The Man Who Came to Dinner. Or Kaufman and Marc Connelly's Beggar on Horseback. These were the plays I read in high school and they were very funny but they also had heart.
When you look at the theatre landscape today you see a lot of variety and that's good for everyone. It's good for the audiences to have a choice, and it's good for artists because it means that there's room for all of us. This past fall on Broadway you could see Proof or The Tale of the Allergist's Wife; and there were revivals of Hedda Gabler and Noises Off opening within a few weeks of each other. This says to me that theatre is healthy and that producers are willing to back a lot of different plays in different genres instead of everyone looking for the next Urinetown.
Beyond a cathartic purpose, what role do you see humor playing for us in today's society post 9/11?
I would never underestimate how important it is to be able to lose yourself in laughter. A few days after the terrorists attacks on New York and Washington, my partner Charles and I went to the video store with the express purpose of finding something to take our minds off of the tragedies unfolding on the news and we came home with "Caddyshack." Not high art but boy, I tell you, watching Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray made us feel better for a couple of hours. I wouldn't say that we escaped anything, but we felt better for a couple of hours and if that's what comedy can offer people then that's a huge and important thing. But what I just said, Preston Sturges said tons better in his movie "Sullivan's Travels." If you haven't seen it you should go out and rent it right now.
What makes you laugh?
That scene in Caddyshack when Rodney Dangerfield is out on the golf course, and he says, "Screw it, let's dance!" and he cranks up the radio in his golf bag and they all get down to Journey's "Any Way You Want It."
Rebecca Gilman is a playwright whose plays include Blue Surge, Spinning Into Butter, The Glory of Living and Boy Gets Girl. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and is a proud member of The Clowny Collective, a playwrights collective dedicated to producing original works in alternative spaces.