![]() ![]() In modern tragicomedy it is the characters, not the audience, who may sometimes be spared the full consciousness of the tragedy of their existence. In Renaissance tragicomedy, by contrast, it is illusion that is tragic (the apparent danger of death), but the true state of things is comic. ![]() Generally the major characters are comic in their fantasies, tragic in the realities of their lives. N each the tragicomic arises from the gap between illusion and reality. ![]() I’m going to offer some of her observations about Chekhov as part of a first wave of tragicomedies in the 20th century sprinkled with some observations you all have been making in workshop, posts, and resonances from text we read aloud last Tuesday. I was reading her discussion of Chekhov and tragicomedy as you all were in warm-ups for Kali’s workshop on Friday and given how much duality we’ve discovered and are actively courting with this production, Foster’s arguments seemed all the more compelling. Is Uncle Vanya a comedy or tragedy? A melodrama or new realism? Realism or absurdism?įor evidence to support this claim, I turn to Verna Foster’s 2004 book The Name and Nature of Tragicomedy. ![]()
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