Sunday, January 14, 2007

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.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you sure you are taking a WRITING class with Sean Hogan, I thought he only taught introduction classes.

Julia said...

Yes, Sean Hogan is definitely teaching a WRITING class. It is his first one (that I know of) at The Groundlings. Normally, he teaches funshop A and B, but now is adding this to the class offerings.

Cyndy Goldman said...

Julia,
sketch comedy sure sounds interesting! won't cha put your voice recordings online because I just know your character voices are going to be fun and amazing! leave one on my voice mail!!! don't be surprised if I leave one on yours!!!! Cyndy

Anonymous said...

Julia!!! I miss you. This is Doug Cheesman. I just googled you on a whim and came up with this blog. I can't remember if you are on myspace or not. If you are write me back- I would love to find out more about what you're doing. http://www.myspace.com/cacheese
or email me at AintEzBnCheezy@yahoo.com

;)

dougH

Anonymous said...

Sean is great. Just great. I've taken one of his intro classes and am probably going to take his writing class next time he offers it.