Farce is the skill of handling tragedy playfully. It came into being only a few years after its more respectable sister –tragedy- with the plays of Aristophanes, who, wearying at his contemporaries’ nudging audiences towards judgements which they would be convinced they had made themselves, thought a lightness of touch, with moral judgement sent to the devil, might make for an excellent, alternative entertainment. Amazingly, all Aristophanes’ plots and ploys are still with us after two and a half centuries: the mistaken identity of persons or objects and false judgements based on inadequate information. An English translation of L’ Occasione fa il Ladro might be, Opportunity Makes the Thief, which hits the Aristophanian bulls eye rather more neatly than the original. Read the full blog by Jack Buckley on Festival Bytes.