Rethinking Laughter in Contemporary Anglophone Theatre

Abstract

The revival on the contemporary stage of long-established aesthetic categories inherited from the comic tradition and comprising a wide variety of styles, ranging from the burlesque, the slapstick or the farcical to satirical and black comedies, calls for a re-examination of the role and function of laughter in anglophone theatre since the second half of the twentieth century. In a post-Auschwitz world where, according to Theodor Adorno’s much-quoted dictum, it has become impossible to write ...