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Laughing Matter

Comedies are theatre plays that make people laugh.The writers of comedies often use different techniques to make their audiences laugh.Cross-dressing men or women often appear on the stage.Dustin Hoffman is famous for his role acting as a woman.Funny plays often have characters that are stereotypes of nationalities or people doing certain jobs.The actors make us laugh by making fun of somebody's way of dressing or telling an amusing story.Acting out sereotypes of people from different countries can be very funny.It often makes people roar with laughter about themselves.It sounds funny to hear foreigners speak with an accent. World play is a way to create fun in comedies.Shakespeare's plays made people in the sixteenth century laugh loudly.But to us his plays are not very funny because the meaning of words is English has changed.Today students of English, even if English is their nother tongue,often cannot understand his jokes.

Clowns also make people laugh.They often act alone or as a pair and make a different kind of fun.Clowns often don't use any words at all.It is their clothes,make-up and the way they walk that make people laugh.Some people think colwns are only funny for children.Actually they can help people forget their problems,at least for a short moment.

Another type of people whose job is to make people laugh are comedians.They often work alone or as a pair.Unlike clowns,comedians'clothes are usually not very strange.Although body language and their face are important in their shows,they do not use the make-up that colwns use.Comedians may act out a situation during their shows.We call that a sketch, but usually,their shows don't look like comedies.What comedians have in common with the players in a comedy is their way of playing with words.Comedians make people laugh,but also think about life.At one moment in a show,you can hear the audience laughing loudly.A few minutes later everybody is quiet, listening and thinking about the comedians' words.

Typical for China is the crosstalk show,where a pair of comedians entertains the audience with word play.A crosstalk show has two speakers making many jokes and funny conversations.They may also dress up a litter or act out small sketches in front of the laughing audience.Comedians of all times and many countries have a long tradition of this type of comedy.

Dating back to the Qin Dynasty (221-200BC), the traditional crosstalk shows, or xiangsheng shows, have made people all over China roar with laughter for centuries. Skilled artists make use of all the richness of the spoken language to create a rapid flow of fun.Their talk includes rhythm and rhyming words as wel as tongue twisters,which often make the audience applaud.To appreciate the jokes of crosstalk artists, listeners have to know evry well what the comedians are talking about.If you are not fluent in Chinese, you will not catch all of it. Perhaps that is the reason why few foreigners know about this Chinese art form.