Resumen de Comedy in French Catalonia: Adventures in Mockery and Self-Mockery
Given the reduced and subservient status of the Catalan language in FrenchCatalonia, the scale of Catalan theatre in the region has been necessarilymodest in the last fifty years. Several dramatists have, nevertheless, enjoyedpopularity, predominantly in the realm of comedy. Since some of the plays, byauthors such as Jaume Llong, Pere Guisset, and Josep Tolzà, have developeda considerable local reputation, they constitute a fascinating view of howhumour functioned as a means of self-identification and survival in the 1970s.How can Catalan be used to assert power for an ostensibly powerlesssociety? Do the victims of comedy always come from those outside thetarget audience for the plays? Is slapstick more important than verbalhumour? The answers to these questions are to be found in ethnographic,stylistic, and theatrical analysis. Perhaps these plays also manage to havecomic appeal beyond their immediate context.
