“LAUGHING MATTERS?: HUMOR IN AMERICAN THEATRE AND DRAMA”
5th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON AMERICAN THEATRE AND DRAMA
Málaga, Spain. May 25-27, 2016
Humor in its various forms, as well as the effort to contain it, has been present from the very first traces of a theatrical tradition in America, which opens with an attempt to perform a farce being promptly suppressed by the authorities. Entertainment has always been a key function of American theatre, and humor has been among the most recurrent mechanisms when it came to getting an audience to laugh heartily and send it home in a hopeful, light mood, sure of its values and world-view, and conveniently “humored.” Music, vaudeville routines, slapstick, and countless other manifestations of so-called lowbrow theatrical culture (whether mistakenly or not) were often thought to pose no threat whatsoever to the status quo and the deep-seated convictions of audiences. However, the repeated struggle to repress and control even supposedly innocent forms of entertainment suggests that, in spite of appearances, humor and comedy have been seen as no laughing matters, and have been used in potentially subversive ways to mirror, satirize and criticize the manners and foibles of society in the U.S.
The 5th International Conference on American Theatre and Drama, a collaborative venture between three Spanish universities (Málaga, Cádiz, Seville) and the ATDS, is the continuation of a series of conferences which have brought together hundreds of American drama and theatre scholars from all over the world, and will be held in Málaga in 2016.