4 minute read
Selina Fillinger’s Comedy Canon
Playwright Selina Fillinger drew from a rich canon of satire and farce to create POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive. “I love farces,” she said in an interview with The New York Times, “but they typically rely on sexist and racist tropes.”
Berkeley Rep’s Artistic Department asked Fillinger to share some insights into the literary legends whose works helped shape the wit, language, and aesthetic of her comedy.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN
My family had a set of 10 VHS tapes of Charlie Chaplin shorts, and they were the first movies I ever saw. His timing, his impishness, and the poignancy he brought to even the silliest antics forged my comedic taste early and gave me a lifelong love of Clown.
Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) is perhaps best remembered for his on-screen character The Tramp, who, with his signature look of baggy pants, fitted coat, bowler hat, cane, and mustache, embodied Chaplin’s social commentary critiquing wealth and class amidst industrialization.
SHAKESPEARE & MOLIÈRE
These days, playwrights rarely write in verse or iambic pentameter. However, when I was an actor studying classical texts, I realized how rhythm, consonants, vowels, alliteration, and breath unconsciously play on our bodies. I do not write in verse, but I am always paying attention to the aural experience of the language. I try to think of each character as an instrument, and their conversations a symphony.
William Shakespeare (1564–1616), an English poet, actor, and playwright, is largely remembered for his long list of theatrical stage plays, including comedies, tragedies, and histories, as well as his collection of sonnets. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), known by his stage name Molière, was a French poet, playwright, and actor who is considered the founder of modern French comedy. His exploration of comedy includes farces, tragicomedies, comédie-ballets, and more, some of which pushed social and religious boundaries to the point that they were banned by parliament or denounced by the French Catholic Church.
OSCAR WILDE
The king of wit and subversion. He had the ability to write work like The Importance of Being Earnest — which was, on its surface, just good fun — while skewering the bourgeoisie.
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), an Irish poet and playwright whose work brought wit and levity to stories loaded with subversion and sharp social critiques. He was famously convicted and imprisoned for “gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts.”
CARYL CHURCHILL
I believe she remains one of our finest living playwrights. The way she writes gender, sexuality, power, and violence stuns me. Her work is wildly funny and dangerous at the same time.
Caryl Churchill (1938–) is a British playwright whose work explores gender and sexuality using non-naturalistic techniques. Her acclaimed works include Cloud 9 (produced at Berkeley Rep in 2002), Far Away, Love and Information, Escaped Alone, and Top Girls, where she introduced the ‘/’ signal to indi- cate when one character begins speaking over another character’s line, a key used widely by contemporary playwrights.
NOISES OFF BY MICHAEL FRAYN
I saw this play for the first time when I was in middle school, and it taught me what a contemporary farce could be. With POTUS I wanted to use the structural elements of farce — mistaken identities, life and death stakes, slamming doors — while centering characters often pushed to margins.
Noises Off (1982), by English playwright Michael Frayn, theatricalizes a play within a play and is loaded with mishaps, hilarity, and slapstick physical comedy and continues to be frequently produced today.
