writing a comic play without trying to be funny

A comic play works best when it treats humor as a tool, not the point. You’re building a dramatic engine that happens to make people laugh.

Here’s a practical way in:

1. Start with a serious want

Comedy is clearest when characters want something badly and can’t get it easily. The want should be urgent and emotional, even if the situation is absurd. The audience laughs because the stakes are real.

If nothing matters to the characters, nothing is funny.

2. Choose a comic pressure cooker

Limit time, space, or options:

• One room

• One night

• One event that must happen

  Compression forces mistakes, reversals and escalation.

3. Let character generate the jokes

Avoid “funny lines” for their own sake. Instead:

• Who lies?

• Who overexplains?

• Who refuses to change?

• Who is brutally literal?

Put incompatible personalities together and let them collide.

4. Build escalation, not randomness

Each scene should make the problem worse:

• A small lie → a bigger lie → total exposure

• A polite misunderstanding → moral crisis → chaos

Comedy comes from consequences, not cleverness.

5. Use rhythm on the page

• Short lines = speed

• Interruptions

• Repetition with variation

  Let silence and timing do some of the work.

6. End with truth

The best comic plays land on clarity: a revelation, surrender or emotional release. Laughter feels earned when something real is exposed.

Examples of comic plays

• Aristophanes – Lysistrata

  Political farce powered by sexual leverage and social satire.

  
  

• Molière – Tartuffe

  Moral hypocrisy exposed through elegant, escalating deceit.

  
  

• Oscar Wilde – The Importance of Being Earnest

  Language as comedy weapon; lies treated as social necessity.

  
  

• George Bernard Shaw – Pygmalion

  Comedy of ideas driven by class, language and power.

  
  

• Noël Coward – Private Lives

  Sophisticated cruelty disguised as wit.

  
  

• Neil Simon – The Odd Couple

  Situation + personality = sustained comic engine.

  
  

• Caryl Churchill – Top Girls

  Formally inventive comedy with a brutal aftertaste.

  
  

• Martin McDonagh – The Pillowman

  Pitch-black comedy where laughter and horror coexist.

  
  

• Christopher Durang – Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike

  Meta-comedy fueled by theatrical inheritance.

  
  

• Sarah Ruhl – Eurydice

  Gentle, poetic comedy braided with grief.

  
  

• Jez Butterworth – Jerusalem

  Comic excess masking mythic melancholy.

  
  

What are your favorites?

For an example of a comic play, see the preview sample of my play, An American Century.