Making real the artificial and the artificial real

Comedy of Manners is a Practical Option for students who wish to understand and recognize the comedy of manners acting style or styles. In other words, the actors must maintain the life and mask of social artifice, but at the same time reveal the true concerns that lie behind such manners to the audience. Literally, making real the artificial and the artificial real.

The main thrust of the course is to examine comedy of manners as an acting style, but it also covers related areas such as writing within the comedy of manners form/style and directing a comedy of manners presentation. The early workshops are constructed as a series of exercises and games where the aim is to give students a means into the comedy-of-manners style by allowing the games and the exercises to do the acting for them. For example, one exercise is called "The European Community". This exercise aims to create different rhythms and changing energies in an ongoing quarrel, a particular comedy of manners technique of Noël Coward. First the actors read or act out the scene (from Red Peppers) to get a basic idea of what is going on. The actors are then asked to think of the most energetic and physical accent in the European Community. Invariably they say Italian. The actors then repeat the scene with Italian accents. Hopefully the Italian accent should quadruple the energy level. Once the "Italian" exercise has been completed it is then time to add a second accent. This second accent should have an opposing energy and rhythm. The group is therefore asked to think of an accent of resistance and stillness. Usually German is suggested. The scene is then repeated so that George keeps the Italian accent but Lily now has a German accent. The exercise should now reveal the opposing rhythms of the two characters. A third and fourth accent are then added: English to be snide and sarcastic and French to be sexually jealous. Throughout the exercise it is stressed that it should be accent which is doing the work for the actor. After the scene has been performed with the various accents it is then repeated with the actors now using their natural voices. Hopefully the energy of the accent and the conflict resulting from the two opposing accents should still be present in the performance, even though the accents themselves have now been removed. The first half of Comedy of Manners is a series of such exercises and games. In the second half of the course the option becomes more text based, though the course does sometimes involve a limited use of improvisation.

Comedy of manners is a theatre form/style that has had various manifestations over the years. An ancient version of the form can be seen in the plays of Menander from the New Comedy of the Greek theatre in the fourth century BC and also in the work of Roman comedy writers such as Plautus and Terence who took from the earlier work of Menander. English comedy of manners arguably began with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, and reached a pinnacle with Restoration comedy, climaxing again with the work of Wilde, Pinero and Shaw, then more recently with the theatre of Coward, Orton and Rattigan. Comedy of manners continues to this day in the plays of Alan Bennett, Neil Simon, Edward Albee and, to some degree, Harold Pinter. Although essentially a practical option, the course does encourage students to make theatrical links across a wide range of traditions.

Comedy of Manners takes a thematic rather than chronological approach. The course looks at the main subject matter of comedy of manners through the years (sex, money, class, social status and social manners) and then examines how different plays and times have tackled similar areas. Specifically the Comedy of Manners coursework involves looking at areas such as self-deception, propriety, secual possession, seduction, bad manners, table manners, creating off-stage actions and argument.

Comedy of manners most popular manifestation today is in the form of television sit-com. In the UK this style/form can be seen most notably in Keeping Up Appearances where snobbish attitudes hide an inferior status, an idea which also played a major part in sit-coms such as Hancock, Steptoe and Son and Rising Damp. Comedy of manners characters dominate the British sit-com — the part of Sybil in Fawlty Towers is a pure comedy of manners invention as is Dorien in Birds of a Feather. Both Men Behaving Badly and Absolutely Fabulous are variations on the comedy of manners theme in that they are comedies of "bad manners". In the US sit-coms such as The Odd Couple and Frasier are also comedy of manners pieces, concentrating on appearances and how things look from the outside. The most unusual example of a US sit-com examining the manners and mores of contemporary social behaviour is Third Rock From the Sun. The course makes comparisons between the television sit-com form/style and the more traditional theatre based comedy of manners’ plays.

Fine comedy of manners acting is a rare gift. It involves precision, intelligence, panache, dexterity and a special sense of knowingness that must always be kept in balance and never be allowed to become unreal or overtly camp. Also, the acting technique — or techniques — of comedy of manners cover a wide range of styles within the one basic form. Exemplary comedy of manners actors include Maggie Smith, Simon Callow, Geraldine McEwan, Ian McKellen, Maria Aiken, Julie Walters, Alan Bennett and Patricia Routledge. The course looks at the skill of these actors and performers and then tries to isolate what it is that makes their technique seem so effortless and yet so difficult to reproduce.