It’s official. The first week of Comedy Studies is now over. It’s been a rush, to say the least. I can tell that one of the most important things I’m going to get from this program is a change in how I view comedy. Comedy is fun. Performing it is fun, and writing it is fun. The problem with that though is that sometimes it translates into me not working as hard as I could with it. When I write, I don’t write enough drafts before I consider a sketch “finished.” I’ve had certain shows where I didn’t rehearse enough, and it’s shown. When I act, I don’t do nearly enough work to define my character. That’s all gonna change, I know it. Majors. Institute. Be ready. Change is in the air…that’s what Obama told me. Also, you guys have to give me a better health care plan.

Yesterday was our first improv class. Save for a few exercises, and warming up the crowd for the 1st season of The Institute, I haven’t done improv since ComedySportz in high school. I miss it. Oh man do I miss it. I’m so excited to not only get to improvise again, but also, go beyond the basic short form games that I’ve learned. In class, we focused on understanding the beats of a scene, and working on character development. I’m quickly realizing that there is a lot more to improv than making a game of Countdown or Mega Replay, funny.

We also had our first History and Analysis of Modern Comedy class. The class was 2 hours long, and we spent the lion’s share of it arguing over what makes something funny. It was as if all my debate and comedy training came together and created this debate-comedy supernova of mental masturbation. It was pretty incredible…I need a cigarette.

While it was not required, my group drew a flow-chart to illustrate what makes something funny. We found the fundamentals of comedy (truth and surprise) and used that to go all the way down the chain. Poop. Funny. Farts. Funny. Sharts. Very funny.