Sketch Comedy Writing

This week was my first week of my Sketch Comedy Writing class at The Groundlings theatre with instructor, Sean Hogan.

It was a hectic week due to having my Improv class two nights with my sketch class crammed in the middle. I have one more week of this chaos before it settles down to just my sketch class.

I get to my sketch class and we do the usual introductions. I have some interesting folks in my class from a cast member of the Gilmore Girls, a programmer/computer/writer guy, pianist/keyboardist, BMW dealership administrative assistant, former pop-singer, animator/artist, stand-up comic and soap opera actor and everything in-between. My instructor, Sean Hogan, is an earth conscious, goofballish dream boat of about 6'7. We start off the class with our introductions and lead into a short exercise to get us started working as a group. We Roo, Roo, Roo children's games. This is a quick exercise for us to think of all the children's games we can think of and report out in round robin style. Then we each took a minute to list what we thought made a good children's game. (i.e. no small parts they can swallow, brightly colored, interactive...etc). We reported those out to the group. Then we began naming the opposites of what makes a good children's game. That spurred on our list of horrible children's games like "My Little Leach Farm" we would then try and pitch. This exercise demonstrated how we could break down the normal into the bizarre "What if..." scenarios found so often in sketch writing.

My other Groundling class, Basic Improv, has been kicking my ass. I've been beaten down almost to the point of tears. Now, I'm not a cry-baby but holy cow can my instructor so easily point out all my improv faults. However, this has been a great learning experience. So, I went to my sketch class wondering if I should just drop it because I need a don't beat me up anymore break.

It doesn't hurt that my Sketch instructor is a cutey but he is also warm and supportive. I left the class with a happy high and about 4 sketch ideas while driving my 2 hour trek home. I purchased a small voice recorder and have been having fun talking into it and testing out character's and voices.

Things to do...

It is the first day of the new year and like many I am wondering what new and exciting things will I do in 2007. For me, it is not so much about New Year Resolutions, but how can I create, perform and basically be more than I am at this point in my life. I have 5 themes I'm focusing on this year:

PERFORMANCE
I have already started by signing up for Sean Hogan's Sketch Writing class at The Groundlings. My class starts the second week of January and I'm giddy. I'm wrapping up my Basic Improv class with The Groundlings this month too. Basically, Basic is meant to kick your ass and remind you how much you suck. However, I'm taking my suckage in stride and learning.

ART
My mind spins constantly with art project ideas, but I can hardly seem to get my art act together. The wierd part is I feel more inspired then ever before, but can't make it into the "do it damn-it" mode. I have been reading a million art mags, checking out some amazing artists on Myspace, just looking at what others are doing and I feel overwhelmed and behind. So, my vow is to quit obsessively buying art magazines and start doing. "Do It Damn-it!" is my motto this year.

GEEKDOM
I plan on geeking out this year too. As stated below, my 4,566th goal is to make a stop motion animation. I don't know what software to use, I don't own a digital camera and I'm not sure what goofy little story I want to create via animated drawing, however...I shall overcome!

LOVE
I'm going to regularly send out love to my fellow artists by leaving comments on their blogs and Myspace accounts. I feel creatives need to be supportive of each other plus we need more good karma in this world.

MONEY
I'm not sure what I can say about this one. I need more and I need to care for what I have.