What is Funny?
A discussion with playwrights Gur Koren, Moria Zrachia, Roni Sinai, Noa Lazar Keinan, Erez Drigues, and Noam Gil on writing comedies: What makes it funny? What can or should we laugh about? And how has the war affected the comedies they want to write or see?
What does a play have to have for you to define it as a comedy? Is there such a thing as a comedy that isn't funny?
Noam Gil: Comedy is more of a perspective than an amount of laughs. In the comedic perspective, there is a certain mockery of reality and of human beings in general. Comedic plays usually deal with the gap between who we think we are and who we actually are. This gap always exists in the lives of the characters, but truly good comedies reveal this gap in the audience, who come to realize that the joke, in a way, is also on them.
Roni Sinai: To define a play as a comedy, the playwright first needs to decide that it is a comedy. You can't argue with them, even if it isn't funny. In my personal opinion, the framing story needs to be comedic. Meaning, when you describe the play briefly, it should already elicit a chuckle. There should be some basic glitch in a human story, from which funny scenes will later be derived that place the protagonist in uncomfortable situations and extreme embarrassment. Embarrassment is a massive comedic device. But still, if Chekhov, for example, ruled The Cherry Orchard a comedy, he was the only one to determine that, though that comedy doesn't make me laugh, personally.
Moriah Zrachia: All the rules of drama apply to comedy- characters with a clear goal who encounter an obstacle, creating a gap, and the characters take actions to bridge that gap and reach their goal. The difference between comedy and drama lies in the way this gap is handled: whereas in drama obstacles cause the characters to confront pain and grow emotionally, in comedy the exact same process occurs, but in an exaggerated and absurd way. It’s no coincidence that the literal translation of comedy is a celebration. A good comedy should be fun, energetic, fast-paced, packed with punchlines, and send the audience home feeling like they just left a party.
What makes you laugh? What comedies do you like, and which ones do you hate?
Gur Koren: I mostly laugh at something authentic, or something really, really silly, which is why I love comedies from both ends of the comedic spectrum—either those that border on drama or those that are so exaggerated and even silly. Comedies I hate are those that try too hard to be funny and just try too hard in general.
Erez Drigues: I am crazy about what used to be called "door slamming farce", especially British comedies of this genre that combine a lot of verbal humor with tons of physical humor. When it's done at a high level, it's a circus at its finest, and a circus at its finest is theater at its finest in my eyes.
Noam Gil: I'm not into farce. The only ones who might challenge that taste are the brilliant Monty Python, but even there, there is always one character representing "normalcy" who becomes abnormal in their attempts at normalcy within the crazy world they inhabit. I like comedies that don't flatten the dynamics between characters just to maximize laughs. A good comedy is one that pushes the boundaries of realism and human psychology without turning into a caricature.
Roni Sinai: I love modern comedies that deal with human situations. Francis Veber is a favorite of mine, Woody Allen, Neil Simon. I don't care for comedies that stoop low just to get a laugh. I'm less into crude jokes. It's not necessary.
On the scale between escapist entertainment and social satire, where do you feel more at home? Did the war change anything for you in this regard?
Noa Lazar Keinan: I feel much more comfortable with social satire than escapist entertainment. I have nothing against entertainment, but I think the theater genre should be utilized for more than just escapism. For pure escapism, you can stay home and watch Married at First Sight. The war only reinforced this feeling for me. It’s clear to me that the need for escapism has grown, but as of today, I wouldn't want to write something that gives the audience an hour and a half of comfort, but rather something that makes them go out and protest.
Noam Gil: The war only intensified my desire to escape from reality. I remember on the night of the first Iranian attack, when I was sure our lives were about to end, I escaped to Seinfeld and the absolute nothingness that George, Elaine, Kramer, and Jerry deal with. It helped me get through the night. Generally, most of what I write is social satire, but even there, I want to mock those who take themselves too seriously.
Erez Drigues: Escapism fulfills an important need of ours as human beings in an ongoing traumatic situation, while on the other hand, good theater must also be relevant and timely. In an ideal situation, a comedy will manage to do both. The war sharpened for me the need not to abandon the satirical side: when the theaters reopened in the first few months of the war, the decision was made to bring The Draft Dodger (written by Roy Chen) back to the stage at Beit Lessin Theater. Reality closed the gaps in the direction of the show, and during the curtain call, I felt that we managed to do something important through this comedy. The reactions from the audience were also on a different frequency. Unfortunately, that's a feeling I don't get to experience often in theatrical work.
Roni Sinai: The war changed everything. I had a play at a very advanced stage, and then the war broke out, and I realized it wasn't right to write escapism without touching upon the bleeding reality we live in. Any way you touch the wound, it hurts, and it's still open. So on the one hand, there is some basic need to escape from reality, but on the other, you can't truly disconnect from it. Reality finds its way to echo inside the work whether I want it to or not. I rewrote that play from scratch. From ground zero.
Moriah Zrachia: Why choose? When an audience laughs, it’s a sign they feel safe, and if they feel safe, they can listen better. Sharp satire can be entertaining and appeal to a broad common denominator, just as "escapist" entertainment can contain social satire and make people think. I believe that if I want to make an audience burst out laughing, the last thing I should do is annoy or anger them. Therefore, I will always try to deliver the social or political critique with a spoonful of sugar, just like Mary Poppins taught me. That is what we need now more than anything—to listen to one another, especially in difficult times and during war. Laughter is not only healing; it also has a crazy ability to connect human beings.
How do you identify and develop an idea that can become a successful comedy?
Erez Driggs: Just like you recognize an idea for a good drama. It's simply good storytelling potential.
Noam Gil: I don't start with an idea for a play, but rather with an idea for an anecdotal situation from which I move forward. I examine the situation, write it down, and try to see how I can use it as a starting point for an entire play. In most cases, I find myself hitting a dead end. Sometimes a full play comes out of it, and sometimes I even like it.
Gur Koren: When there is a premise or a comedic mechanism that can serve as a basis for comedic situations, that's a good starting point, and then you can develop it, amplify it, and sometimes exaggerate it based on how you answer the question, "How do you like your comedy?".
Roni Sinai: A funny idea is not enough. It requires development at the synopsis level that leads it to a climax. This is actually the engine that turns the show into a comedy instead of a collection of sketches. A well-constructed structure is necessary to sustain the play on.
How important is the amount and intensity of the audience's laughter to you? What would you be willing to sacrifice for more laughs, and what would you never be willing to compromise on?
Moria Zrachia: Unequivocally, and if it isn't clear I'll emphasize it: what matters most to me is that the audience's roars of laughter blow the roof off, and short of jokes involving the humiliation of human beings or mocking the weak, I will stop at no means to maximize the amount of laughs.
Erez Drigues: Laughter is the bottom line, and you can't argue with it. At the same time, you have to be very careful with what you are willing to sacrifice for it. I am not willing to compromise on the truth of a specific moment, whether in the acting performance, the directing, or the written material. I'd rather there be no laugh there if necessary. Usually, in a good comedy, if you commit to it and don't panic, that moment will be followed by a much bigger laugh.
Noam Gil: As a theatergoer, I hate seeing actors step out of character and do something exaggerated just to get the audience's confirmation that they are indeed funny. To me, that disrespects the audience's intelligence. On the other hand, as a playwright who has written comedies and sat in the auditorium anticipating the audience's laughs, I was more forgiving of actors who did that. In short, I'm a hypocrite.
Noa Lazar Keinan: The audience's laughter is perhaps my favorite sound to hear after the sound of my children's laughter. There is immense and immediate satisfaction in the reaction to a punchline that lands right where it belongs. For more laughs, I am willing to repeat a gag again and again, willing to extend pauses, and even let the show slow its pace down a bit for a momen, but I won't add jokes that genuinely ruin the scene's rhythm or deviate from the character's action. Additionally, I won't make fun of communities I don't really know, nor will I use racist humor. What I love most is laughing at myself or people like me.
Roni Sinai: I love sitting in the auditorium with people I don't know and hearing that I managed to make them laugh. At the same time, if a certain joke interferes with the logical progression of the scene, I will always cut it. The price is too heavy and not worth it.
Gur Koren: There's nothing like it—laughs are fun, they are happiness, fuel, a drug. If you've established the tone of the work for yourself, a specific tone that has a clear measure of authenticity and is clear to you, then you won't have to sacrifice anything.
How similar is your personal humor to most people's humor, and how much does it influence your writing?
Noa Lazar Keinan: I've happened to sit in plays where the audience breaks down laughing, while I understand what's funny, yet can't manage to laugh at it. And precisely during the moments when the house is quiet, suddenly something is really funny only to me. There are also plays where I laugh in sync with the rest of the audience. In any case, when I write, I try to find what will make me laugh, and hope the audience will laugh at it too.
Erez Drigues: I'm not sure. Sometimes I feel like I share a common humor with close friends more than with the general public, but sometimes the audience proves you wrong. When it comes to writing, the moral of the story is boring and well-known: write what makes you personally laugh. The problem is that you forget, and the tendency to alter and move closer to what we think will make "everyone" laugh always creeps in. It's a bummer that you have to learn this lesson over and over again.
Noam Gil: In comedies, we feel the sense of community in theater much more. In general, if we call a certain person "funny," we always mean not an objective definition, but rather their effect on their audience ("He makes me laugh" or "She makes the audience laugh"). If there is no connection whatsoever between my private humor as a writer and the humor of the audience, then it's better to throw the play in the trash instead of putting it on stage.
To what extent does meeting the actors and the audience influence your work process and how?
Moria Zrachia: In most cases, I will bring the material to the actors at a very early stage and throughout the entire process. They are the first ones I test punchlines on; they help me shape the characters, and I draw ideas and hear feedback from them. This type of process helps me write a cohesive and complete piece of work. The initial encounter with the audience is my absolute favorite. This is where I see where I was wrong and where I hit the bullseye, and based on the audience's reactions, I change, polish, and tweak throughout all the early shows until no punchline is left hanging.
Noa Lazar Keinan: The encounter with the actors really highlights which jokes are successful and which ones need to be thrown out. There are, of course, also comedic moments born in the rehearsal room that I didn't plan in the writing process. For instance, physical humor born out of the staging, or jokes that the actors bring from their deep familiarity with the character.
Meeting the audience in a comedy is very scary at first, because a comedy in which the audience doesn't laugh is a sad event. But comedy depends on timing, and sometimes a two-second pause makes the difference between the audience's snickering and wild laughter. So you can learn a lot during the first few performances and perfect your comedic moments.
Gur Koren: When the play meets the audience, this marks the beginning of my separation process from it. The audience is the final dramaturg of the material and determines the ultimate precision of its tone, because no matter how much you prepared for a specific tone, you can't force the audience to laugh, and even harder than that—you can't force them not to laugh.
Roni Sinai: The audience is like a big animal. Say, a huge bear. And usually, when something makes it laugh, it makes it laugh every single night, even though all the people in the hall have been replaced. It's a strange phenomenon. You replaced five hundred people, and yet the other five hundred laugh at the exact same spot. A miracle of nature.
Do you have any tips for aspiring writers who want to write comedy?
Roni Sinai: Don't get stuck on the beginning. First of all, reach the end and only then start polishing the beginning. Writing the final third of the play is the most demanding and challenging task. Once the ending exists, it's easier to write the beginning accurately. It's Sysiphean work.
Noam Gil: I always work according to the "opposite principle." When writing a specific situation involving an interaction between characters, I ask myself what the logical response of one character would be to what another character said or did—and then I write the exact opposite. In short, constantly play with the audience's expectations and surprise them in a way that seems inevitable in hindsight.
Noa Lazar Keinan: I would tell beginner writers to first think of something that makes them laugh. You can choose a character with some extreme trait or flaw (preferably something they know from their own world), find a desire that is very hard for them to fulfill, and then think about how to make that character miserable and get them entangled on their way to achieving that desire—but in such a way that we don't genuinely worry for their fate, which is perhaps something that separates drama from comedy: knowing that there will be a happy ending. Also, gaps work extremely well in comedy-gaps between characters or between worlds. For instance, I once wrote a short play about girls auditioning for the Third Temple choir. The gap between the world of auditions and the essence of the Temple provided the comedic foundation for the play.
Erez Drigues: Write what makes you laugh and what's painful to you at the very same time. The more personal it is, the better.
What is the best original Israeli comedy you've seen in recent years and why did you think it was good?
Erez Drigues: Damn Me (To Hell) by Iftach Ophir and Tomer Avraham at Tmuna Theater. The most original, the most daring, and above all, the funniest.
Roni Sinai: I loved The Disabled by Gur Koren, directed by Gilad Kimchi, which ran at Beit Lessin Theater. There was an extraordinary combination there of a crime comedy using a theater group of people with disabilities. It resonated with me deeply because I've worked for years with people with autism and the handling of the subject touched me. It's a brilliant play written with tremendous sensitivity, and it is very funny.
Noam Gil: Abdullah Schwartz by Rami Vered surprised me and had me cracking up, and I watched Yaron Edelstein's Ringo with great pleasure (which is code for "I pissed my pants").
Gur Koren: I really loved the two musicals The End by Maayan Even and Guy Weintrob, and Ness Ziona: The Musical by Yael Tal, both of which were blessed with original writers, funny actors with good taste, and a director who brought them together.
What is your favorite part of the comedy creation process
Noam Gil: Once I understand who the characters I'm writing are, and when they manage to make me laugh, the jokes come easily and writing is a delight. Until I get there... God help us.
Roni Sinai: Opening night is my favorite time. Because the day before is a nightmare. The actors run a rehearsal in front of an empty auditorium and there's total silence; only the director and the writer can guess that it will be funny, while an artistic director might sit there thinking we're facing a catastrophe. The moment an audience arrives, the miracle happens, and the comedy works is a huge relief.
Moria Zrachia: Laughing. Truly laughing all the way through. That’s also why there’s no chance I’d get Botox to erase the laugh lines on my cheeks and around my eyes; they're living proof of how much I’ve laughed in this life and how much I’ve enjoyed it. Just kidding, I'll definitely get Botox at some point. I can't be walking around all wrinkled like this...
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