Once you have been inspired by a personal experience or an inspiration from the whole clothe of your imagination as your story, you can begin making notes about your characters by giving them 'back stories'. Today's 'back story' is for Brenda's character 'Kip'. Kip is an aspiring standup comedian.
This morning we began our workshop with a reading of Act I, Scene 3 of Brenda's tentatively titled "House of Cards": Kip's trial by fire as a stand-up comedian.
Let me preface this session with a few rules about writing comedy: It is very difficult! What you or I as playwrights think is comedy may not be funny when presented by our actors/readers/critics/audiences. Unlike vaudeville comedians with their 'trunks full of jokes' (stolen or not) modern television comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, most successful comedians have a group of comedy writers behind them. Why? Because its in their contracts! Insurance! Producers (CBS, NBC, ABC et,cetera) insist upon the back-up team. Without his back-up team, Jay would be hard pressed to come up with a 'fresh' monologue every night, let alone as many as 260 'fresh' monologues every year.
So... with comedy being difficult to write... in mind... and bearing in mind also that the comedy writers at the Thistle Dew do not have back-up teams of writers, we rely upon our actors/readers/critics/other playwrights to help us achieve comedy on stage. Yes... that is where it really happens: on stage, in readings and even in rehearsal as re-writes. The collaboration between the actors/readers/critics/directors and the playwright is critical to the evolution and shaping of comedy. But it is not the genesis of a comedy for this or any other play. Comedy for this play, "House of Cards", is in the mind of playwright Brenda's character, Kip.
If Kip wants to do stand up comedy and humor he and the playwright must understand that creating comedy is an art and comedy is an art form. It is a skill developed by the comedian with a series of subtle changes in voice and/or facial expressions and body contortions and postures in front of a mirror or in front of sympathetic friends who can be used as foils, or in the lonely atmosphere of an attic or basement.
Comedy is a skill developed only with practice and rehearsal and re-writes and re-writes and re-writes by editing as you go: pre-writing, writing, polishing and revising also includes spelling correction, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, sentence structure according to your characters' dialect, subject/verb agreement, consistent verb tense, word usage, story continuity, et cetera.
This morning we began our workshop with a reading of Act I, Scene 3 of Brenda's tentatively titled "House of Cards": Kip's trial by fire as a stand-up comedian.
Let me preface this session with a few rules about writing comedy: It is very difficult! What you or I as playwrights think is comedy may not be funny when presented by our actors/readers/critics/audiences. Unlike vaudeville comedians with their 'trunks full of jokes' (stolen or not) modern television comedians like Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien, most successful comedians have a group of comedy writers behind them. Why? Because its in their contracts! Insurance! Producers (CBS, NBC, ABC et,cetera) insist upon the back-up team. Without his back-up team, Jay would be hard pressed to come up with a 'fresh' monologue every night, let alone as many as 260 'fresh' monologues every year.
So... with comedy being difficult to write... in mind... and bearing in mind also that the comedy writers at the Thistle Dew do not have back-up teams of writers, we rely upon our actors/readers/critics/other playwrights to help us achieve comedy on stage. Yes... that is where it really happens: on stage, in readings and even in rehearsal as re-writes. The collaboration between the actors/readers/critics/directors and the playwright is critical to the evolution and shaping of comedy. But it is not the genesis of a comedy for this or any other play. Comedy for this play, "House of Cards", is in the mind of playwright Brenda's character, Kip.
If Kip wants to do stand up comedy and humor he and the playwright must understand that creating comedy is an art and comedy is an art form. It is a skill developed by the comedian with a series of subtle changes in voice and/or facial expressions and body contortions and postures in front of a mirror or in front of sympathetic friends who can be used as foils, or in the lonely atmosphere of an attic or basement.
Comedy is a skill developed only with practice and rehearsal and re-writes and re-writes and re-writes by editing as you go: pre-writing, writing, polishing and revising also includes spelling correction, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, sentence structure according to your characters' dialect, subject/verb agreement, consistent verb tense, word usage, story continuity, et cetera.
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