I am a college student.  We're entering a drama contest, and I'm in charge
of the background music.  I find this task very challenging, for the play
is quite complicated.  I need music that has a mixture of tragic, ironic
and farcical elements.

There is a play within the play. I think the most difficult parts are:

1) The play within the play was originally a tragedy, but because of poor
acting, resulted in a farce.  What kind of music should I use in the
beginning of the play (when it still looked like a tragedy) and towards
the end (when it has virtually turned into a farce)?

2) In the prologue, i.e., before the middle play, what kind of music should
I use to set the mood and create the atmosphere? The difficult thing is
that it is neither completely tragic nor completely farcical; the author
dies at the end, that's rather tragic, but in view of the three actors,
it's quite farcical.  And there are also elements of irony.

3) In the epilogue, i.e., after the middle play, the actors (who were
supposed to really die) all turned out alive, and the author died instead.
Again very hard to select suitable music.

I think tragic music is easy to find, but farcical music (and mixture of
the two)? The only one that comes to my mind now is Prokofiev's 1st violin
concerto, 2nd movement.  Though this piece is rich in irony, humor, satire,
acerbic bite, and probably sounds a bit farcical, I find it hard to apply
it to the play.

For those of you kind enough to help, here is a synopsis of the play:

It is entitled "Three actors and their drama," and the playwright, Michel
de Ghelderode, noted in the foreword that it accidentally turned out to be
very similar to another play, Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an
Author.

In the beginning the wreched author asks the three actors to act for the
last time, and the actors say that they've been acting his play for years,
because they, in real life, were so similar to the characters in the play.
In the "play within the play," the actors were all supposed to commit
suicide; but they agreed in advance that this time they are going to REALLY
die on stage.

The "play within the play" was supposed to be a tragedy, but it turned out
to be a farce, because the actors kept on forgetting their lines, and in
the end they totally confused their identities, and spoke their own lines
as though in real life.  Moreover, none of them had the courage to really
die on stage, so when the play over, they were surprised to see each other
alive, and laughed about it.  But the author, seeing his play turned out a
fiasco, really committed suicide.

My sincere thanks to anyone who can give me some advice (though I hope I
won't be told that it's better not to have music at all!).  Thank you very
much for your help.

Gilbert Chang