Overview
- Female: 0
- Male: 2
Context
This excerpt commences when Paul, a student in Prof. Groves’ honors seminar in Comedy, arrives at Groves’ office to get approval for the term paper that he’ll work on throughout the semester. He is very excited about the topic he has chosen. Groves, who has come to know Paul as very bright but a loose cannon intellectually, is doing his best to keep his apprehensions hidden even as he prepares for one of Paul’s off-the-wall ideas.
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GROVES: Come in, Paul.
PAUL: Thank you.
GROVES: Sit down.
PAUL: Thank you.
GROVES: So. Have you got a topic for the comedy paper?
PAUL: I got a dynamite topic.
GROVES: Good.
PAUL: I’m really excited about it. Started reading all these books and everything.
GROVES: Let’s have it.
PAUL: Ya ready?
GROVES: I hope so.
PAUL: Does Comedy Exist.
(Pause)
GROVES: Does comedy exist?
PAUL: Does Comedy Exist.
GROVES: In thirty pages?
PAUL: Sure.
GROVES: And what’s your thesis?
PAUL: Whaddya mean?
GROVES: Does it exist or doesn’t it?
PAUL: Hell no. Bunch o’ crap.
GROVES: Can I ask you something, Paul?
PAUL: Shoot.
GROVES: You don’t think comedy exists.
PAUL: Right.
GROVES: So what the hell did you take the course for?
(A beat or two)
PAUL: It’s not a good topic I picked?
GROVES: I just don’t understand it. Generally, you take a course in something, you don’t end up asking does it exist.
PAUL: So like the question isn’t allowed?
GROVES: No, it’s just… What d’you think we’ve been talking about for the first two weeks of class?
(A beat)
PAUL: You want an honest answer?
GROVES: What the hell.
(Paul mimes masturbation.)
GROVES: I beg your pardon?
PAUL: All this chit-chat, is it a comedy or is it a farce or is it a romance or a black comedy or a tragi-comedy or a comi-tragedy… C’mon!
GROVES: What?
PAUL: Sppppppt! Y’know?
GROVES: Paul, for an English major, your modes of communication are somewhat distressingly non-verbal.
PAUL: Hey, the idea is to communicate, right?
GROVES: Communicate to me why you’re so opposed to the use of genres.
PAUL: You mean like comedy and tragedy and crap?
GROVES: Uh, yeah.
PAUL: Pigeonholes, professor.
GROVES: But useful pigeonholes.
PAUL: Sure.
GROVES: So there you are
PAUL: For librarians. (a beat) Gotcha there, huh?
GROVES: Paul, I think the idea is to create a certain order, and thereby better enable us to find meaning in our lives.
PAUL: I’m all for finding meaning in life. But what the hell’s the meaning of making neat little piles outa everything? (out of his chair, pacing) It’s like over in the Psych Department.
GROVES: What about it?
PAUL: Boy, you think you guys got genres. They got ya beat by a mile. Over there y’got your Paranoid Systematized Delusion, your Paranoid Unsystematized Delusion, y’got Schizophrenic, Hebephrenic Schizophrenic, Chronic Undifferentiated Schizophrenic…
GROVES: But again, isn’t there a usefulness?
PAUL: Sure. Locking people up. Packing ‘em away. My faculty advisor over there is this wild guy. Professor Smith – ever heard of him?
GROVES: Wait a minute. Your advisor?
PAUL: Yeah.
GROVES: You’re a Psychology major?
PAUL: Yeah.
GROVES: Paul, to be eligible for the comedy seminar you have to be an English major.
PAUL: I am an English major.
GROVES: How can you have two majors?
PAUL: Easy. They haven’t caught me.
GROVES: (holds a moment) I have a feeling you’re going to go places in life.
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