Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)
STUDIES - Judit Kádár: The Figure of 'Everyclown'in Jack Richardson's Gallows Humour
and for the major concern of late 20th century American Drama: the loss of the American Dream and the universal problems of alienation and estrangement According to Szilassy, this kind of drama offers two alternatives: violence and/or conformism (25). These concerns and their presentation in Richardson's play are to be examined later on in this paper. Some postmodernist features can also be observed, that make the voice of Gallows Humour so peculiar. The playwright wrote a Prologue to explain his ideas about the role of the theater and the genre of tragicomedy. He returns to the tradition of the Middle Ages, the golden days when the theater —just like society and the individual —had a clearly definable role, as his 'Everyclown' figure claims: "I was a popular hero" (Gallows Humour 70). Everyone knew in the theater who were behind the masks and what values they stood for. Nevertheless, in the chaos of our age, everything has changed. One cannot make a difference between the hangman and the hanged, the absurdity and uncertainty of our existence become the uncertainty of the mechanical characters as well as their creators and the whole creative process. His awareness of this uncertainty factor in writing results in the connection of the artist-artifact-audience similar to the metafiction of the 1960s. The term 'metaplay' probably could fit this drama. Richardson's interest in the parable of the fate of the theater versus the fate of the hangman and the hanged would reflect something like that 1.2. Conformism, Alienation and the Claustrophobic Theater —Attempts to Transform the Misfit ... And the moment would catch up with him at the moment of death, all the copies of the universe he'd invented not fantastical enough, and he'd die the way he lived, expectedly. (Di Cicco: The Patsy of the Many Worlds Theory) 47
