Open Forum

I have two advanced seniors who are taking private lessons with me on comedy/comedic performance. Last year they did a performance of a series of episodes from the Kathy and Mo show. They've done a lot of the standards (Odd Couple, etc.) and want to continue working on comedic scenes from plays and TV, but I'm running out of ideas...

Any suggestions? 

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Lindsay Hearn Brustein
St. Stephen's Episcopal School
Austin TX
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Dead Man's Cell Phone, Sarah Ruhl might be a possibility. There's some darkly comic scenes, comic in the sense of painfully awkward  a la the British version of 'The Office'. There are two different scenes between two females, one where the characters are roughly equivalent in age, and one where one of the females is somewhat older (not decrepit, just older; like, old enough to have a fully-grown adult son).

Drawing a blank otherwise...

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Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Hillsborough County Schools
Ruskin FL
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Just remembered, there's also a mother/daughter scene in 'American Tet,' which is more serious than comic but, but has a jet-black vein of satire running through it, as the daughter rails against her army-wife mum and questions what America stands for, as mum crumbles a little defending it...

There's also a couplet of plays called 'House & Garden' by the British playwright Alan Ayckbourn. Another mother daughter scene. Wow. Why is the mother/daughter thing such a prevalent source of comedy? Interesting. It's classic, awkward British comedy: the mom knows her husband is having an affair, and the daughter is trying to talk to her about it, but unsuccessfully. 'Upper class' or rich, but contemporary, which means that the characters don't necessarily have to talk like they have a pole up the behind...

Might be worth checking out! Hope they help.

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Phillip Goodchild
Theatre Arts Instructor/Assistant Department Head of English
Hillsborough County Schools
Ruskin FL
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Moliere's "The Misanthrope" has a great two-woman comic scene which essentially functions as two female monologues (which can then double as audition pieces). 

You can find the text under "The Misanthrope" on my website at http://www.moliere-in-english.com/2007/scripts/index.html .

Tim

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Tim Mooney

timmooneyrep.com 
Prospect Heights IL
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Oscar Wilde offers a number of scenes that come to mind. Take a look at An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest. 

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John Friedenberg
Director Of Theatre
Wake Forest University Dept of Theatre & Dance
Winston-salem NC
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