Happy Sad

My boyfriend Paul read the play (at last) and so I started questioning him about it endlessly. This was followed by my determination that 'I think it also needs to be quite tragic' 'At the end?' 'Yes, but also earlier, it has to be there all the way through.'

And then I got a row because, and quite rightly, my boyfriend said 'But the play is really funny. It should have tragedy but let it pass. Don't go and lose sight of how funny and ultimately entertaining it is'. He was absolutely right.

I'm sure I'm not the only director that has this conundrum- that to justify your involvement you have to remind everyone that life is tragic and drama is about feelings and etc more than about entertainment. Of course it is, and of course there will be an awful lot of sadder and darker resonances within the play. But there is something - an insecurity- about letting pages pass by that are, well, really funny. Maybe it's just me.....

What ultimately we will need to look for is a style and tone that allows the freedom of both tragedy and comedy to be present together AND to allow each to function separately. This sounds really obvious, but it's amazing how often the two things are treated as separate entities (possibly due to my made-up insecurity of the director). It's this mix that the brilliant comedy writers and performers like Ricky Gervais and Charlie Chaplin and Armando Iannuci (to name just a few) do so amazingly.

So we've only got to be as good as them.

No pressure.