SPECTACLE:Aspects of
Comedy
CLA 220: Comedy: Greece
and Rome to Hollywood
SET
The set in a play or movie is very important to the way a story is
told. It offers insight to the location of a scene, and also how the actors work
in their environment. A set is nearly as important as the plot in that without
it, there is no way to know how characters live the way they do. On this page,
there is information about how the writers Aristophanes, Menander and Plautus
used the basic outline of a set to set the scene for their plays. We also look
at the variety of sets used in Charlie Chaplin movies and the films It
Happened One Night and Whiskey Galore!
Theatre of Dionysus and a Hollywood
Set
WEEK
ONE
Aristophanes' Birds has a set that seems quite fantastical. It allows the reader to imagine a place that would befit the odd birds that inhabit the city of Clodcuckooland.
BIRDS: The main character Makemedo convinces the Hoopoe to create a city just for the birds. Makemedo is looking for a way to get out of the hustle and bustle of Athens, and so helping found a new city seems like a great idea. The city is described as being between the land and the heavens that the gods occupy: "Because you will inhabit the space between Heaven and Earth......Now, when the mortals sacrifice to the gods, the smokey savor has to pass through your territory in order to reach up to heaven" (Makemedo 188-91). Imagine a simple orchestra set up in ancient Greece to look like the space between the earth we dwell and the skies we look up at. Because sets were not of such great importance at this time, the audience would have had to imagine how the area looked.
Charlie Chaplin's movies have a lot of attention paid to the sets. Charlie was a very physical actor and so it would have been very important that the area around him allow for the physicality of the scripts.
THE COUNT: The start of this movie takes place in a tailors store. Charlie uses the items in the store to show his silly nature. The tailors shop gives insight into what Charlie does for a living and so we know that he does not make a lot of money and is lower class. When he has the opportunity to pretend to be a Count at a party, the mansion where it takes place becomes the backdrop. The mansion allows a lot of space for Charlie to run around in to escape his boss as well as the other party-goers when they realize that he is not who he claimed to be.
THE IMMIGRANT: The biggest set item in this movie was the boat that brought Charlie to America. The ship is old and rocking in the seas. This results in Charlie being able to use the set for laughs. He moves with the ship, rollong over people that are there with him. When he gets to America, the next place he is in is the restaurant. This is the set used when Charlie sees his crush from the boat for a second time. There they eat together and have a backdrop for romance and humility when Charlie doesn't have the money to pay their bill.
EASY STREET: Here the set is a city street and the dilapidated buildings that Charlie is assigned to guard after he becomes a police officer to better himself. Charlie confronts the bully of Easy Street, and so the set acts as there battlefield. The street and a room in the upstairs of a building. Charlie and the bully fight in the room, and a hilarious series of cat and mouse takes place.
WEEK TWO
Menander uses more realistic sounding sets in his works. There are mostly descriptions of ordinary housing for the characters in his play Dyskolos.
DYSKOLOS: This story takes place in the country. From the stage notes, we know that there is a large shrine of the God Pan and the Nymphs on stage. There are two houses, one belonging to Knemon, the other to his son Gorgias. By Knemon's door is a statue of Apollo of the Ways. There would also be a well somewhere on stage, since a lot of action and reaction occurs around things and people that fall into it. There may have been a country scene painted on flats neat the skene to show the land that Knemon worked himself.
Much of the action in It Happened One Night takes place while the characters are on the road. In a movie, it is a lot easier to have many sets to show how the characters act in different environments.
IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT: The leading lady Ellen is used to living in the lap of luxury. Many of the sets that surround her when she is with the upper class show this. She lives in a huge mansion and her father owns a yacht, which she jumps overboard from. When she meets Peter, Ellen must deal with things that she is definitely not used to. She has to ride on a bus, sleep in cheap hotels, and in one instance, sleep in a pile of hay. Living without the lavish allows Ellen to see that those are things that she doesn't need and that she really doesn't want since meeting and falling in love with Peter.
WEEK THREE
Plautus is very similar to Menander in that his backdrops seem to be rooted in reality also. There is the idea that his stories are about people that were like those in the audience, and the sets reflect this.
RUDENS: The setting is described as being a seashore community on a "rugged hillside". There are two buildings on stage, with no other evidence of others residing at this location. One of the buildings is a temple of Venus. The other building is a farmhouse belonging to Daemones. Much of the action takes place through the characters entering and exiting these two places. The two courtesans belonging to the pimp Labrax, Palaestra and Ampelisca, seek refuge in Venus' temple, and are eventually set free because of Daemones' kind-hearted nature.
Whiskey Galore! is similar to Rudens in that both plots revolve around a shipwreck. Here the sets become a hiding place for stolen whiskey and the backdrop for showing the loyalty to fellow members of the community.
WHISKEY GALORE!: The setting for this tale is the Scottish island of Todday. The island is the way of life for it's inhabitants. They are a working class people, fishers and store keepers. Much of the focus for the story revolves around a boat that has crashed within the perimeter of the island. The boat has on it 50,000 cases of whiskey, something the men on the island have been longing for. The waters then become the stage for rescuing the whiskey, and for watching out for those who might try to take the stolen wjiskey away. There is also the place where celebration occurs. This setting for the festivities throughout the movie show the unity in the community. One more important piece of the set that is mentioned quite often is the church. The men hold off on getting the whiskey from the ship, so as not to break the Sabbath. Here the set proves the morality and spirituality of the cast of characters.
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