<!-- /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} -->

In this article, Weird Al offers some advice for successful parodying.  He speaks of 1) good writing that can sustain a gag, 2) humor that endures, even to those who don’t know the original work, and 3) video details that mimic the original well.

Although he focuses on songs and videos, the tips can easily be extrapolated to forming a parody in the form of a play.  I attempted to use these tips while creating my parody of Hotel California, though since I am an amateur I was clearly nowhere near as successful as he.  I feel that tips from Weird Al can be important as he is mostly a successful parody creator in that he evades copyright issues on a large scale (though not all the time, of course).  In other words, these are skills that can be used to create a good parody that is most likely not a copyright infringement.