Written comedy is a method of expression that has existed since cultures penned language. Widely recognized as the ‘oldest written joke’, Reuters identifies a Sumerian tablet from 1900 BC that holds one of the first written expressions of comedy: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap." From this joke, almost 4,000 years of comedic material has been processed. In a relatively recent phenomenon in the comedic landscape, sketch comedy serves as a tool of reflexive representation, showcasing vignettes of chaos, rooted in the mundane. This Honors Thesis looks to identify not only the core traits of sketch comedy, as its form demands rigorous structure, as well as the core function of sketch comedy as a cultural lens. The expression ‘rules are meant to be broken’ is one of the great boons of sketch comedy’s appeal; a pattern of ‘rule-breaking’ will be explored through a live performance of my own sketch comedy pieces. The written framework of this piece explores form and function as fundamental requirements for effective sketch comedy, and illustrates the innate understanding of the audience to accept chaos, deception, or the perversion of truth as a tool to express comedy. Sketch comedy exists only as a subset of a wider spectrum of comedy, drawing on historical certainties and established foundations that maintain today. The added creative project serves as a proof of concept; a demonstration of the forces of form and function as they exist on stage. Through careful analysis of my own written work, the outlined focus on the ‘true definition’ of sketch comedy will align carefully with my own practiced works.

For my honors thesis, I decided to do a creative project in the form of an extended comedy act. With this performance, I wanted to make jokes about my identity and experiences in my life while synthesizing the skills I had acquired over my college career. I decided I wanted to do this project because it felt like the best way to combine my passion (comedy) with my major (communication) in the form of a comedic performance study. And while I thought the performance would be the most informative aspect of my project, the workshop process ended up being far more enlightening. Through the workshop process, I was able to better understand the challenges that come with developing a comedic autoethnographic performance, and to discover the true purpose behind the art I was creating.

In this dissertation, I translate and provide a critical analysis of the Iranian play, Tomb Dwellers (2009), by Hussein Kiyani. It was first staged after the contested presidential election in Iran in 2009 which brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into power for a second term. The play depicts the socioeconomic situation of Iran and its relation to other countries, the situation of women and the working class during Ahmadinejad’s two terms of presidency. Tomb Dwellers is written as a comedy, a genre more likely to make it past censors in Iran or other despotic countries. My research and translation project are sparked by questions that move in two directions simultaneously: one, toward understanding the sociopolitical context for theatre in Iran after the revolution of 1979; the other, toward the challenges of translating into English a play that stands as a social metaphor in its own historical context. Regarding the former, which forms the basis of my critical analysis, I explore the strategies artists have used to avoid the limitations imposed by the authorities. In making this play available to English-speaking readers at a time of political tension between Iran and the United States I offer to USAmerican audiences a more nuanced perspective of the way Iranian people feel about their government and its relation to other countries. This play is both timely and informative. Timely because of the tensions between the US and the Middle East. Informative because it represents the Iranian community and may serve to create a bridge between the two cultures. Translating and staging this play along with the critical analysis I am providing will help American audiences and immigrants from other countries to know more about Iran in a creative and entertaining way.

The Alien Play, as posted here, is a placeholder name for this working draft of a full-length stage play that functions as part-science-fiction adventure, part-spiritual-parable. As the process of playwriting is a complex array of research, outlining, drafting, revising and editing, the play is preceded by a craft essay detailing the playwright's inspiration, research, and narrative design. In order to complete this project, the playwright conducted research in the field of religious studies, focusing specifically on the phenomena of paranormal experiences through the lenses of psychology, sociology, and philosophy, asking questions such as: How and why do new religions arise? In what ways (narrative, content, structure, etc.) do these new religions reflect the spiritualist mythologies or religious institutions of the past? What do these similarities or differences say about the social, economic, or political atmospheres that give rise to such movements?

More specifically, this play works within the cross-section of religion/spirituality, mental illness, and UFO and other extra-terrestrial related anomalies to ask such questions as: What does it mean to be Human? What does it mean to be "alien" or Other? How do we internally and externally construct a binary between Humanness and Otherness, between Self and Other? How do we construct reality? In what ways does this anthropomorphize our conceptions of the Human or the Other? In what ways, specifically, may this affect our understanding or manifestation of mental illness, in ourself and others?

The play you see here is a final draft for the thesis, but is still in development elsewhere. Here is a brief log line (i.e. a short description of the general plot and conflict of a script) for the piece: Four sisters from a broken home must deal with the sudden discovery of their late father's communication with an extra-terrestrial race bearing a message of Love-and-Peace. When they, too, begin to communicate with the E.T.'s, they must juggle issues of mental illness, memory, and trauma all while outrunning a shadow government that will stop at nothing to uncover their secret.