For anyone who doubts the existence of the medieval sitcom . . .
The Medieval Studies Program Graduate Student Conference Presents:

The Rude Mechanicals Medieval and Renaissance Players of Shepherd University premiering 4 medieval French farces at UCSB

The Farce of the Fart
Confession Lessons
Monk-ey Business
Cooch E. Whippet

from
"The Farce of the Fart" and Other Ribaldries:
Twelve Medieval French Plays in Modern English,
ed. and trans. Jody Enders (Penn Press, 2011)

Friday, May 17, 2013
5:00-7:30 P.M.
Theater and Dance West 1701
University of California, Santa Barbara

Translator Jody Enders is a prize-winning theater historian in UCSB’s Department of French and Italian. She will be on stage for a talk-back with the actors and Director Betty Ellzey immediately following the performance. Her anthology received this ringing endorsement from Monty Python's Terry Jones:

"Scurrilous, sexy, stupid, satirical, scatological, side-splitting, and probably something else beginning with 's,' Jody Enders's translation of twelve French farces is a real discovery that goes a long way to re-adjusting our perception of the Middle Ages. Enders is a great champion of comedy at its most vulgar and hilarious. She points out that however silly or banal these farces may appear to us, they nonetheless confront the real controversies of their day over the law, politics, religion, social order, or the battle of the sexes. Thoroughly grounded in her academic approach to the subject, Enders nevertheless writes with liveliness and humor and wit. She is unafraid to reference modern comedy in her translations and insists on the primacy of performance in assessing these comedies from half a millennium ago."

http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/medieval-farces/

http://ucsbmedievalstudiesgrad.wordpress.com/

Sponsored by the Center for Portuguese Studies, Department of English, Department of French and Italian, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Graduate Division, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Medieval Studies Program, the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, and Translation Studies.