In order to facilitate interaction among members or anyone interested in Comedy & Performance, Dr Eric Weitz has created a Facebook Group. Please, feel free to join the conversation.
The ISTR Working Group on Comedy is for anyone interested in the fact that people laugh and (perhaps more importantly) seem to like causing other people to laugh. The group seeks to include discussion in all areas related to humour and the comic with Irish connections, from conventional dramatic literature to historical and contemporary performance practices, performers, playwrights and companies, and including stand-up, television, film, online and biopolitical performance. There is specific interest in staging comic narratives, physical comedy and the notion of the comic body; and of farce, the grotesque, Grand Guignol and the anarchic.
Working Group Coordinator
Prof Eric Weitz is Head of Drama at Trinity College Dublin. An academic who is also a once and future actor and director, he has published The Cambridge Introduction to Comedy, The Power of Laughter: Comedy and Contemporary Irish Theatre, a number of articles and essays, and contributions to reference works like the Oxford Encyclopedia for Theatre and Performance and the upcomingEncyclopedia of Humor Studies.
Contact: Dr. Eric Weitz weitzer@tcd.ie