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Definition
Farce is a subgenre of comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations
that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable. Farces are often highly
incomprehensible plotwise (due to the many plot twists and random events that occur), but
viewers are encouraged not to try to follow the plot in order to avoid becoming confused and
overwhelmed. Farce is also characterized by physical humor, the use of deliberate absurdity or
nonsense, and broadly stylized performances. Furthermore, a farce is also often set in one
particular location, where all events occur.
Examples of Farce
Film:
Clue, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Hangover, Freaky Friday, Home Alone, The Pink
Panther, Rat Race,The Three Stooges
TV: Arrested Development, Drake & Josh, I Love Lucy, The Suite Life of Zack and Cody,
Seinfeld, South Park
Performers: The Marx Brothers, Monty Python
Farce and Noises Off
The characters in Noises Off spend the whole of the show attempting to stage a terrible
farce called Nothing On; in other words, Noises Off is a farce about a farce. While this may
conjure up images of secondrate internet memes (“Yo dawg, I heard you like farces, so I put a
farce in your farce so you can laugh while you laugh!”), the use of a farce as subject matter for
another farce actually has a powerful theatrical upside: believability. As prominent British
director John Caird puts it in his book, Theatre Craft, “A good farce obliges the audience to
believe both in the characters and the events to the point where laughter is their only recourse.”
Noises Off’s setting (the theatre itself) provides a large toolkit for more and more wildly
absurd events without breaking the world of the play. A 12th century knight leaping onto the
stage of Noises Off, while certainly improbable, probably wouldn’t be terribly funny because it
would violate the established world of the play. Noises Off instead relies on a cast of ridiculous
characters and circumstances to create excellent farcical action.
Characteristics of Farce
● exaggerating stereotypes
● stock characters (ex. the dumb blonde, the Latin lothario, the drunkard)
● characters oblivious to other action occurring on stage
● base characters, i.e. ignorant or from a low social class
● absurd situations
● low humor (physical comedy, silly visuals, bawdy jokes, drunkenness)
● lack of plot (plot is likely to be improbable or incomprehensible)
● humor drives the plot forward