What Makes Women Laugh?
When I was thinking about which female playwrights I should interview on the subject of writing comedies, many more male playwrights who created comedies came to my mind than female playwrights, and when I asked someone (the name is kept in the safe) if he had any ideas for more female playwrights, he told me the following sentence: "Women aren't funny," and, immediately alarmed by his own words, added fearfully: "Just kidding, of course... But I really can't think of any female playwrights who write comedies." I immediately thought of asking Tamar Keenan write something about this subject, because I knew she would have something to say, but Tamar said she didn't have time, so I suggested sending her questions that would annoy her so much that she wouldn't be able to resist, and to my delight, I must have annoyed her enough, because lo and behold, she answered them for me...
So, this is a written interview, because you don't have time and I'm going to deliberately annoy you, so it would be very unwise of me to ask you these questions from a distance of less than twenty kilometers at least, but nonetheless: As someone leading the very successful struggle to promote '50/50' equal opportunity for women theater creators, what do you say to the chauvinistic claim that—when all is said and done—women are less funny than men?
Regarding this chauvinistic claim, I can only say that the person who made it was probably a man without a sense of humor.
Unlike theater, where there really aren't many female playwrights who write comedies, look at how many female comedy writers there are on television: Gitit Fisher, Galit Hoogi, Carmel Netzer, Bat Chen Sabag, Natalie Marcus, Lital Schwartz, Aliza Hanovitz, Adi Ashkenazi, Talia Lavie, Atara Frish, and that's just off the top of my head, off the top of my head, before I even Googled them...
Okay, obviously there are many funny women, we all know them, but why don't they almost ever write funny plays? There are quite a few excellent female playwrights, but why don't they almost ever write comedies?
I must first address this from a global perspective: the number of female playwrights whose plays are produced is significantly smaller than the number of male playwrights whose plays are produced, and therefore, it is likely that there are quite a few female playwrights with a sense of humor who can and want to write comedies or who have even written comedies, but we have not yet been exposed to them.
Secondly, comedy is something that needs a lot of work. It requires polishing and more polishing, mistakes, corrections, readings, more corrections, and then meeting an audience, and correcting some more. Comedy is a mathematical equation with more than two unknowns and it takes a lot, a lot, a lot of work to arrive at the best version, the one that will get the most laughs out of the audience. This statement applies to both sexes. There aren't many par excellence comedies staged in Israel, there are a lot of comedy dramas whose structure is significantly different from the structure of a comedy, and comedy dramas are written by women. When we examine comedy, there is only one important question that needs to be asked: is it funny or not funny? And since repertory theater productions are often quite a financial risk, the tendency is to trust people who have as much experience in the field as possible, and naturally, unfortunately, these people are usually men.
Is there a chance that we will have another playwright like the late Anat Gov, whose comedies have been performed hundreds of times in Israel and produced all over the world?
- First of all - a great, polished, wonderful writer. I would give anything for a workshop or even an hour and a half meeting with this funny and sharp woman. I have no doubt that we will have more - not Anat Govs because she was truly one-of-a-kind - women with different names who will make the desert bloom.
To my great joy, I got to work with quite a few very funny women who wrote comedies: Oran Dickman, who wrote the play "A Tumor Named Boaz" Irit Kaplan who wrote the play "Naomi and Norma" (together with Yoav Bar-Lev), in the Tzavta Short Theater Festival that I ran for four wonderful years with Noa Shechter, there were many funny playwrights who wrote great comedies: Yael Tal, Gal Chapsky, Noa Gendelman, Shani Tzabari, Adi Drori, Magi, Naama Shahar, Dana Etgar, Dana Tross, Ofir Sgerski and many hilarious more. As anyone who writes for theater knows, in order to write your first good play, you often have to write your less good plays, and therefore what is needed most of all, for women and men, is a platform to experiment, make mistakes, and ultimately succeed.
If I may annoy you a bit further, there are definitely good female playwrights, and they also write good comedies, but why are they almost always about love and family? If we go to genres like satire, black comedy, nonsense, or vulgar farces, we'll find even fewer female playwrights there, right? Are romantic or family comedies the result of gender based socialization? Taste? Discrimination? Genetic differences?
Both genders always write about what hurts… But when I think about it, the two most notable female comedies I directed dealt with other topics: "A Tumor Named Boaz" is a disturbed (romantic) comedy with rather dark tones, and "Naomi and Norma" is a very social comedy that deals with friendships between women, aging, and gaslighting. It should also be noted that the issue of family and home is a topic that almost all Israeli drama in the last decade and a half or two deals with. As a society, we are very focused on family and family issues, to the point that even Greek tragedies are being adapted to center around the family unit and are achieving great success. So I wouldn’t necessarily attribute it to gender, but rather to the society we live in, and to supply and demand.
Okay. So why do you, as someone who understands, loves, and also creates comedies, not write comedies yourself?
- Really?!
You're asking for it... all I need is a room of my own and a little free time away from cooking, taking care of the kids and husband, doing laundry, and cleaning... Just kidding.
I love comedies with all my heart, it's where I feel most at home and I don't think I'm an unfunny woman. On the other hand, I really love directing, and as part of that, I also love giving comedies the polish and precision they need, and I feel that's where I'm at my best and, after all, that's where I have the most fun, and fun, as we know, is a supreme value.
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