ABSTRACT
I have always approached comedy as a serious art and regarded masters of the craft with awe. The masters possess meticulous technique, cunningly disguised in a relaxed spontaneity. The results of their efforts are immediately and cruelly manifest: the audience either laugh or they don’t. Small wonder then that the lunchtime hubbub in the green room of the Bristol Old Vic when I started out as a director in the late 1970s was always sharply divided: unrestrained hysteria and mirth from the actors rehearsing the tragedy and intense, urgent negotiations amongst those working on the comedy.
