Edward Clinton's Winners! – is a hilarious and slightly edgy look at competition. Winners! is fresh, sharp, outrageous and witty. Always entertaining, it is a farcical look at what goes on behind the scenes of an American cultural institution – the beauty pageant. Three incorrigible beauty pageant contestants (Miss Texas, Miss Ohio and Miss New Hampshire) are forced to share the same hotel room during a beauty pageant in Detroit, Michigan while they compete for the crown. This imposed isolation only encourages the girls to engage in more and more hilarious acts of competition, revealing their less than beautiful sides and the backstage antics we usually don't get to see; all the while poking good natured fun at the beauty pageant process we all know so well.
Winners! is a form of comedy called farce. The New American Encyclopedia defines farce as “Comedy based on exaggeration and broad visual humor. It's traditional ingredients are improbable situations and characters developed to their limits.” Over the years, playwrights have embraced this form of comedy from Aristophones, Shakespeare and Moliere to George Feydeau, Oscar Wilde, Stephen Sondheim (A Funny Thing Happened On the Way To the Forum) and Neil Simon (Rumors). At the root of comedy is lack of balance, distortion, over-emphasis or under-emphasis and surprise. Farce aims to entertain by means of unlikely and extravagant - yet often possible situations, disguise, mistaken identity, and verbal humor of varying degrees with a fast paced plot. Broad physical humor and deliberate absurdity are also commonly employed in farce. |
