Comic plays and social values

Brief

This lesson asks you to compare and contrast how social values are communicated in different drama forms and styles of theatre from different times and places. The museum offers one case: the comedies of a playwright of the Caucasus. Further forms, and the live theatre itself, your class must bring. ¹

Where does a value live: in the words or in the performance?

The expectation asks you to compare. Think about what a spectator at a comedy is given: characters and a plot. Decide what a spectator of another form would be given, and what you would look for in each, before you read.

Go deeper

The Encyclopaedia of Islam lists his six comedies by their stories: the alchemist Molla Ibrahim Khalil, Monsieur Jourdan the herbalist and the famous magician Mostali Shah, the vezir of a khan, the bear that caught the robber, the miser, and the attorneys in a lawsuit. ² Read as a cast, they name an alchemist, a herbalist, a magician, a vezir, a miser and attorneys. ² The Encyclopaedia says that in the plays and the narrative he put progressive ideas against feudalism, the corruption of justice and the superstition then widespread in the Caucasus. ³

Think about it

A comedy can let a value be spoken by a character, or let it show in what happens to a miser or an attorney. Which way would a spectator take in more easily, and what in a comedy would show you?

Into the museum

Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada: the six comedies, their dates and the journal that printed several of them.
Tiflis: the town where he worked, as the museum's older records describe it.

Try this

Read about Mirza Fath 'Ali Akhund-zada. Make two columns, one for him and one for a drama form your class brings, and write who is listening and what each form lets the performer say about how people behave.