Getty: “What Makes People Laugh? Ancient Greek Comedy and its Filipino Legacy”

Join Mary Louise Hart, associate curator of antiquities at the Getty Museum, and director Jon Lawrence Rivera, founder of LA’s Playwright’s Arena, as they decode a comedic scene on a fourth-century BC Greek vase. Using masks, costumes, and active staging to upend classical myths for laughs, ancient Greek comedy set a standard for humor millennia before the invention of today’s television sitcoms. Hart and Rivera discuss how Filipino comedy and pageantry play into many of the same themes, demonstrating the enduring features of comic performance across cultures and time.