I think that ultimately any effective drama or tragedy tries to put you as much as it can into the protagonist's shoes.
The office of drama is to exercise, possibly to exhaust, human emotions. The purpose of comedy is to tickle those emotions into an expression of light relief; of tragedy, to wound them and bring the relief of tears. Disgust and terror are the other points of the compass.
The main question in drama, the way I was taught, is always, 'What does the protagonist want?' That's what drama is. It comes down to that. It's not about theme, it's not about ideas, it's not about setting, but what the protagonist wants.
I come from a very expressive family, so it's really not surprising that we became actors. There was a lot of real-life drama in our house. Some of it was drama, some of it was comedy and some of it was comic-tragedy.
A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you're playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you're playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you're playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality.
Life is a drama full of tragedy and comedy. You should learn to enjoy the comic episodes a little more.
The Drama Years is filled with heart-stirring stories, just-been-there advice from recent teens and practical, actionable tips for parents. It's full of real girls talking about everything from stress and body image to love and materialism. Reading this book, I cringed in recognition of my own drama years, just wishing this book had been around back then and so grateful I'll have it as a guide for my own daughter.
A lot of times I play the villain or the comic relief, and I get to kind of play the comic relief to a degree, which is fun, but I also get to say, "You are created in the image in God. You are a perfect child of God. And this part of you is the heart of who you are. You're not alone, and you're okay just the way you are."
There's comedy in tragedy, and tragedy in comedy. There's always light and dark in most jobs. Whether it's framed as a comedy, drama or tragedy, you try to mix it up within that. You can work on a comedy and it's not laugh-a-minute off set. You can work on a tragedy that's absolutely hilarious.
I knew that time would now pass for me differently than it would for him - that I, like everyone in that room, would go on accumulating loves and losses while he would not. And for me, that was the final and truly unbearable tragedy: Like all the innumerable dead, he'd once and for all been demoted from haunted to haunter.
Everybody wanted to be the hero of their own story. Nobody wanted to be comic relief.
the true art of the gods is the comic. The comic is a condescension of the divine to the world of man; it is the sublime vision, which cannot be studied, but must ever be celestially granted. In the comic the gods see their own being reflected as in a mirror, and while the tragic poet is bound by strict laws, they will allow the comic artist a freedom as unlimited as their own.
People think that because I play comic roles, my films will have a comic flavour as well. But I am a student of drama.
The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. ... [But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.
Tragedy turns into comedy when you watch your own drama and realizing it as a mind-created fiction designed to create you a sense of identity.
The tapestry of history that seems so full of tragedy when viewed from the front has countless comic scenes woven into its reverse side. In truth, tragedy and comedy are the twin masks of history - its mass appeal.