Tag: Language arts

Sketch Comedy is a popular source of entertainment with roots as far back as Ancient Greece. This course leads students from brainstorming ideas, developing ideas, writing a final sketch and performing a live show and / or producing original video. The purpose of this course is to get students excited about creative writing, story telling, collaborating with others, and confidence public presentation. Through the lens of this currently popular form of entertainment we introduce students to classical literature, comedic theater and more. EMAIL for more information on bringing our programs to your students. NYC DOE VENDORS (Improv Theater LLC)

WHY SKETCH COMEDY?

Sketch Comedy is a short play or film usually grounded in a singular comedy purpose. Topics for comedy are as endless, bound solely by the creativity of the writer(s). Sketch Comedy as a class combines cultural arts and language arts. We are basically ELA and THEATER but by presenting to the students as a classroom in Comedy, more students get excited about the process. The class provides a powerful experience and serves as a gateway for students to get excited for further study into literature, writing and public presentation. In this class students will:

1. Study the history of comedy, from Ancient Greece thru early TV and Radio.
2. Learn to write an original short play via brain storming exercises, collaboration, first drafts and rewrites, and a final script.
3. Learn to produce and perform live show and video.

Producing Final Sketch

Working backwards, let’s discuss how powerful this training is to a student. While this course could lead to a student working at Saturday Night Live by age of 19 like Eddie Murray, Dave Chapelle, or Pete Davidson, most will benefit in more meaningful ways. Our final end product, a live sketch comedy show and/or produced video teaches students how to produce and present content of any kind

The number one fear in his world is public speaking. Sketch Comedy class is possibly the closest scenario to working on a corporate team, whether in marketing, project management and even scientific labs. Creating a fun safe space we develop self confidence fierce and public speaking skills, as well as basic skills in acting for stage and screen.

We work with corporate teams daily to teach presentation and collaboration from skills, using Improv Comedy. This course looks to teach those skills to high school and middle school students. While students share the laughter, they are preparing for be leaders in any industry.

Students live on their devices. We can debate through pros and cons of teens using social media. But unless there is a total societal collapse, chances are, the future is now, and being able to use these devices for good is possibly the most powerful tool a student can learn for their future success.

Developing Sketch Comedy Scripts

Every TV show – Skech comedy, sitcoms, episodic dramas, soap operas, dramedies, etc – has a writers room. Every week a head writer, called a show runner, hears ideas, assigns writing projects for scenes and episodes. The ROOM is a place to bounce around ideas, read thru scripts, and discuss edits. The show runner greenlights a final script, and the greenlights for production.

This mimics this process. In the early seeks we will have exercises to brain storm ideas and details. Later weeks, we will outline and write a rough draft. Eventually we will produce a final script to be produced live and or as a video.

Along the way we will use the ROOM to discuss, improvise, read drafts, and otherwise work thru ideas to help writers produce a final script.

Meanwhile, students develop a deeper understanding of creativity writing, story telling, characters, settings, plots, themes, and more.

History of Comedy

The history of comedy is the history of creative writing, philosophy, literature, theater and human civilization. Again, by using a popular form of entertainment, we are able to reach students and peak their curiosity in many areas of academic study. Students become better students of history, language arts and even the sciences. We give academic study a practical application with an end product that students can be proud.

Bringing Sketch Comedy to your Students

There are a few ways to bring this program to your students.

1. Simply buy the book and run the class. The paperback is just $9.99. Buy 20 copies as text book for $200 and let the fun begin, anywhere in the world.
2. Bring Walt Frasier to your school for a master class in comedy. $500 for up to 2 hours includes 20 copies of the book. Walt Frasier will lead the class in some improv games to launch the creative spirit, discuss his approach to brainstorming, hear some pitches, and set you off onto a successful session. We could also host this workshop at our Times Square NYC theater.
3. THE FULL RESIDENCY Our team will drop by your classes up to 10 times, 20 hours. Walt Frasier himself at least 2-3 times, plus one of his teaching artist for all 10. As is, this will produce an entire show of live sketches and videos. Partnered with your la Guage arts teacher, develop into a full ELA or cultural arts elective, showing videos of classic sketches appropriate for all students, episodes of comedy TV and movies, discussing these works, as well as comedic short stories and going deeper into the history of comedy. You can also create additional collaboration and rehearsal time beyond our teacher attendance. $3000 include 10 sessions, 20 hours with one of our teachers, at least 2 sessions with Walt Frasier, 20 copies of the book, and optional online hosting of videos.
4. THE FULL PROGRAM: Bring all of our programs to your school. Leverl 1 Improv Comedy. Level 2 Stand Up Comedy. Level 3 Sketch Comedy. Every class is designed to be self contained, with no experience necessary. In progression, the complete program delivers a population of confident creative powerhouses ready to take on the world in any profession.

Author, Artistic Director Walt Frasier has 25+ years of professional credits in comedy, Theater and music. He got his big break in TV performing comedy sketches on MTV’s Stankervision, Late Nite with David Letterman, TruTV’s Friends of the People, and most recently on HBO’s Pause with Sam Jay. As an actor, Frasier has appeared on NBC’s Blacklist, CBS’s Blue Bloods, USA’s Royal Pains (Filmed in Puerto Rico), Netflix’s Lilyhammer (filmed in Norway) and NICK’s Naked Brothers Band. In addition to 1000s of live performances around the world, Frasier has also appeared in numerous commercials, industrials, webisodes and reality TV shows. Frasier has written many books on comedy performance and more.

A division of Improv Theater LLC

The New York Improv Theater is a one stop edutainment center for corporate team building, office / holiday parties and more. Our comedy shows and workshops deliver high impact results. Clients include Google, Mercedes Benz, META /Facebook, TikTok, JP Morgan Chase, Accenture, Morgan Stanley, Twitter, Roblox, Rimowa, EI Digital, Accenture, Datadog HQ, Milbank, BING/Microsoft, Band of America – Merrill Lynch, Home Depot, Ernst & Young, Johnson & Johnson, Louis Vuitton, Coach, UBS, BDO, AMEX, Master Card, Macy’s, 360i, IBM, GM, Kraft, UNILEAVER, HBO, Prudential, Convene, Conference Board and many more… (NYC DOE VENDORS)