Learn Standup Comedy at Comedyfessionals Comedy School!
Launch your career in stand up comedy by enrolling in Standup Comedy class at Comedyfessionals.

Course Description and Overview

The Comedyfessionals Standup Comedy course will offer a comprehensive overview at The Art Stand Up Comedy and serve as a Comedyfessionals’ Laugh Lab for creating humorful stand up work: jokes, bits, chunks, sets, while discovering your own comedic TRUTH and your natural comedic VOICE.

Comedyfessionals students will practice bringing themselves to the stage with uninhibited, complete abandon and unashamed commitment to their own, unique sense of humor. We will explore the “rules” that facilitate a healthy Stand Up dynamic and draw on anything and everything for our work in class, ultimately delighting in making ourselves and others think and laugh.

Comedyfessionals Comedy School Stand Up Comedy Class Learning Objectives

By the end of the course, the student will have embodied and integrated the various components of stand up comedy in a live performance in front of a comedy club audience. The creative, physical, and academic ‘strands’ of study will come together for a final assessment.

Proposed Objectives

• Get familiar with a comic’s tools: notebook, mic and stand, “the light”, recording device

• Understand the five basic stages of stand up comedy: writing, “getting up”, recording, evaluating and rewriting

• Learn how to write for stand up comedy • Examine elements of a joke: set up, punch, tags, toppers, callbacks

• Develop jokes, bits, chunks, sets, ultimately creating your act

• Take the stage with confidence, flexibility and a sense of play

• Develop an awareness of audience feedback using sight and sound

• Improvise in the moment, utilize crowdwork, edit on the spot

• Review what works and why, what does not work and why

• Participate in constant, constructive evaluation of work

• Listen to and critique recordings, re-write material as needed, adding tags, adjusting order, cutting, etc.

• Investigate the concept of “writing onstage” vs. taking the stage with a “script”

• Build a strong sense of your own point of view

• Explore your own stand up persona using physicality, personality, voice, repetition of themes, tempo, exaggeration, etc.

• Create a strong, broad physical and vocal rage

• Experience being an active listener, offering pitches and support

• View and discuss the history of seminal artists including: George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bob Newhart, Eddie Murphy, Maria Bamford, Chris Rock, Rita Rudner, Joan Rivers, Phyllis Diller, Amy Schumer, Robin Williams, Sarah Silverman, Paula Poundstone, Wanda Sykes, Jerry Seinfeld, Zack Galifianakis, Louis C.K., Mitch Hedberg, Groucho Marx, Dave Chapelle, Don Rickles, Roseanne Barr (& more)

Proposed Objectives (Cont’d)

• Learn to identify style, structure, point of view and persona in the work we admire

• Produce a showcase of work

Required Readings and Supplementary Materials

Born Standing Up by Steve Martin The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy by Kliph …..Nesteroff

Sick in the Head: Conversations About Life and Comedy by Judd Apatow

Punchline (movie, 1988)

Various stand up clips to be viewed and discussed in class

Recommended reading

Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers by Mike Sacks

How To Succeed in Business Without Really Crying by Carol Leifer

Funny on Purpose: The Definitive Guide to an Unpredictable Career in Comedy: Standup + …..Improv + Sketch + TV + Writing + Directing + YouTube By Joe Randazzo