Comedy for Animators

Chapter 11Comic Acting

There has been no new comedy talent, to speak of, developed in the past few years, because the young actor and actress look with disdain upon comedy acting. They all want to emote and become Clark Gables and Betty Davises.

Hal Roach¹

There is a lot of great advice available about acting in animation, but not so much dedicated specifically to making people laugh. It is the same with most acting instruction in general. In the preface to his book Why is That So Funny?, John Wright has this to say:

In most of our drama schools far more attention is paid to making students cry than is ever paid to making them laugh. This is partly due to the legacy of Stanislavski, and the majority of our acting teachers base their approach ...