Sunday, December 28, 2008

Show me the funny

"But I am Schmendrick, the last of the red-hot swamis!"

I was reviewing some of my previous posts, and I realize I'm overlooking writing about one aspect of "The Last Unicorn" that is just as important as puppets, sound, or story theater: humor! Yes, the piece has adult themes, and ideally we'll be landing really aesthetically nifty and intense moments- but even the most grimly realistic drama (and this will not be a grimly realistic drama) needs to throw the audience a bone as far as laughs go. Those familiar with the book or the movie of "The Last Unicorn" know what I'm talking about- Peter S. Beagle wants readers and viewers to be able to chuckle a bit too. Humor is tricky to get right, but I'm working on keeping opportunities for laughs in mind as I work on revisions to the script for the stage version. A lot more is going to have to be explored in rehearsals- and the funny bits won't be able to be fine tuned until we're actually performing for you-the-audience. When it comes to comedy, the audience is always right- you can dream up the funniest joke in the world, but if there's nothing but crickets chirping when you finally perform it in front of people you've failed. So in honor of that, here's a series of unicorn clips that will be dearly familiar to some of you on the internet. These short cartoons definitely aren't afraid to explore the humorous aspects of unicorns (and fantasy stories in general):

Planet Unicorn Episode 1:


Planet Unicorn Episode 2:


Planet Unicorn Episode 3:

No comments: