Genres

The invitation includes a list of requirements for each one-act play. The first requirement is theatrical genre. Each team will be given a theatrical genre. They might all receive the same genre, but the wording implies (to me) that each team will get a separate genre. Three teams = three genres. So which genres are most likely? I can think of a few genres off the top of my head, but I was curious what my theatre minded friends would come up with. Here's the list from a Facebook post:

Musical Theater, Comedy, Tragedy, Theater of the Absurd, Theater of Cruelty, Shakespeare, Farce, Tragicomedy, Melodrama, Mummers, Historical, Restorative, and Satirical. Wikipedia provides this list: Comedy, Tragedy, Historical, Musical Theatre, Theater of Cruelty, Theater of the Absurd. Comedy is further broken down into Farce, Satirical, & Restoration Comedy. I would add the genres of dinner theatre, mysteries, thrillers, and any combination of the above (e.g.--comedy thriller).

That's an extensive list, but it should be straightforward to pare it down to a more manageable and more likely lists of genres for the project.

Shakespeare gets eliminated first; another part of the project is to incorporate a Shakespeare line into the play (that will be the next blog post so be thinking). Also, asking a group to come up with a cohesive iambic pentameter script in just 24 hours is a bit extreme. Even if they could write it that quickly, getting them to memorize it would be more difficult. There is more to Shakespeare than iambic pentameter; it doesn't change anything. Shakespeare will not be one of the genres. Besides, Shakespeare is more of a style than a genre. Within his writing he had other genres often broken down into comedy, tragedy, history, and romance.

Next to cross off are absurdist theater, theater of cruelty, and mummers. I don't mean to be rude, egotistical, or to underestimate my collaborators but I think the entire trio would be eliminated because they are less familiar theatre formats. If you don't know what it is in the first place, how are you supposed to create it? Also, would the audience be interested in seeing any of those genres if they were not expecting to see them? No. Also, as a form mummers is probably too limited for this project.

After those are gone I am ruling out historical. Historical plays require research to gain intimate knowledge on the subject. Twenty-four hours is not enough time to do that well.

Dinner theatre gets eliminated because the venue isn't right for dinner theatre.

Musical theatre should probably be ruled out, but I wouldn't put it past the organizers to sneak it in. Many of the cast members are accomplished musical theatre performers and could probably pull this off is necessary.

I would eliminate farce, satire, restorative comedy, and any other sub-genre of comedy. Comedy as an over-arching genre stays. This would give a group a chance to be humorous, but give them a lot of leeway for how they could be humorous. Demanding a farce (or other sub-genre) is too limiting, especially for a first project. I also know that the organizers are big fans of comedy, have participated in improv comedy, and that the cast are quite the crew of irreverent jokers. It would be a crime not to have comedy as a genre.

If comedy is staying, then so is tragedy. Tragedy is a good foil to comedy. It will give the audience variety.

That means one more genre left for the last team. Our options are thriller/mystery (yeah, I'm lumping them together), melodrama, or tragicomedy. And romance. Let's not forget Shakespeare's romantic genre. Personally, I would enjoy writing a thriller, but I am not sure the organizers will. Creating a good mystery with clues, misdirects, twists, scares, etc. is demanding. It would be an amazing challenge. It won't happen in this project.

I can't find a reason to eliminate melodrama, tragicomedy, or romance. So, to do well I should study the essential elements of comedy, tragedy, melodrama, and romance. I had considered writing a little about each of the genres here, but this blog post is already a little long. Maybe that will be my next post.

What do you think? Is there a genre I missed? Which genres would you like to see in the upcoming project? Would you rather 3 different genres or all groups to perform in the same genre? Respond in the comments!