The Art of Comedy Elective takes place every day except for Wednesdays during first period. Students focus largely on building a community as well as a team within the classroom focused on training in improvisation and comedy writing. The class will perform multiple improv shows throughout the semester and will also provide some sketches to perform at the beginning of monthly NEST meetings.
The Media Arts department at Animas High School will be doing its first ever Exhibition at the Smiley Cafe on November 30, 2023. This will feature work from the Digital Art classroom with Drew Semel, student work from the Art classroom with Britt Blasdell, student interviewers and stories provided by the Journalism classroom with Jessica McCallum.
Goals for this Class
- To have a final performance at the Smiley Building on November 30. - To have a number of lunch time performances throughout the semester. - To cultivate a community within the classroom (to make them a working team of comics). - To keep the learning space safe and inclusive for a group of vastly different humans. - To create a comedy club at Animas High School. - To build empathy, intellect, wit, as well as the ability to communicate with anyone into the skills and talents of my students.
The improv unit for the comedy class spanned most of the semester as it is the foundation for all other work to be done in this class. Students kept a journal where they kept track of major rules as well as games with rules. This unit culminated in three different improv shows featuring a variety of games as well as hosts. First the students had a show at an all school meeting, this was the day before exhibition and gave us the opportunity to refine the students shows before their two shows at the Smiley Cafe the very next day.
Sketch Writing unit.
This unit did NOT get the time it deserved and will have more space reserved in the future. The students started by watch James Franco's documentary Saturday Night. This documentary was a guerrilla style documentary that followed Saturday Night Live Monday morning through Saturday night, informing students of the process that professionals used to write and perform sketches. After the documentary students took part in two projects. The first was called "Trial by Fire" this allowed my students to try sketch writing in small groups without guidelines, this also informed our next project that was based around fine tuned sketches. For the next project students had a pitch meeting, they spent an entire class period pitching sketch ideas, they then split into groups and began work. As students worked, I travelled from group to group offering feedback. Finally the sketches got sent to the reading table where sketches were cast and read aloud to the class. Students took this time to write feedback and then students picked two sketches to refine. These were showcased during the final week of electives at lunch time.