Can You Train to be Funny?
July/August 2005

If comedians are born, not made, why are comedy training programs thriving like never before?

Comedian Will Franken

The beginner standup comedy course at The Hyena Comedy Institute in San Francisco was hurtling towards its climax. Each of the nine novice comedians in the class was gearing up to perform eight-minutes-worth of original material in front of a live audience, but one student was having a particularly hard time coming up with jokes. Steff Casella had, in fact, been suffering from an enduring stretch of writers' block since the eight-week course began, some seven weeks previously. Now she watched, with a mixture of awe and dismay, as her classmates asked the teacher penetrating questions about the quality of the lighting; mused about whether the concept of sleeping with Arnold Schwarzenegger was funnier than the idea of sleeping with Donald Rumsfeld; and queried whether it would be OK to invite 65 members of the local leather community along to the course's final performance.

Casella’s bout of self-doubt first made itself apparent to the rest of the class in Week Three during an exercise that was meant to develop the comedy fundamental of “writing jokes involving the element of surprise.” The teacher cited the Stephen King funny, “I still have the heart of a little boy…in a jar on my desk,” as an example of the form and the students were given ten minutes of class time to come up with their own snappy examples. Perching on a high stool in a lilac dress and matching crushed velvet lilac boots, Casella reluctantly shared her efforts with the class. “I can’t even make up a bad joke,” she said, fiddling uselessly with the microphone stand. “Here’s all I could come up with: ‘Time is irrelevant…Sprint PCS.’ That’s just stupid.”

But as the weeks rolled on, things began to change. As the rest of the students relentlessly primped their scripts—honing both lines and delivery until jokes that had once received good-natured guffaws from other students barely prompted a snicker—Casella’s turns on stage, though rambling and incoherent, made everyone laugh. Following the self-flagellation attack that kicked off her routine each week, she would loosen up and start riffing about whatever popped into her head—from ad hoc observations about B-movie vampires to disapproving remarks about celebrity yoga teachers. When Casella finally stepped out in front of the audience in the graduation show, her performance made people laugh precisely because it came close, in its flamboyantly unpolished way, to being spontaneous conversation with the audience, rather than staged schtick.

From the fat lady slipping on a banana skin in a 19th-century burlesque show to the aggressive behavior of a Manhattan soup-seller in the “Seinfeld” TV series, jokes have always turned upon the element of surprise. But the ability to pass the art form off as casual conversation, rather than a choreographed routine, has become almost equally important—a phenomenon that dates back to when Lenny Bruce knocked standup comedy sideways, rejecting the stiff, snare-drum-roll-punctuated one-liners of the vaudeville tradition in favor of yanking the mike off the stand and making fluid small-talk with the audience. This fundamental shift in the way comedians perform their work has created an interesting paradox for anyone trying to learn or teach comedy today. Disguising artifice beneath the medium of everyday chitchat, comedy is widely regarded as the most innate of all art forms. As a result, comedy resists the notion of pedagogy, especially in the traditional, analytical sense, because many people simply believe you are either born with a talent for making people laugh or you aren’t. “I don’t think you can learn to write jokes,” comedian Woody Allen is quoted as saying in Larry Wilde’s book The Great Comedians. “Not good ones. You can learn certain mechanical things – to create variations of other jokes written, even good variations, but it’s nothing you can learn. It’s purely inborn,” And in a recent interview, Tom Sawyer, co-owner and booker of Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco, took the same position. “Some people work and work at comedy and are never going to make it,” he says flatly.

If this is true, then any attempt to bring the anarchic art form into the classroom seems doomed to failure. “There are many ironies inherent in running a comedy program within a conservative academic institution,” says Allan Guttman, director of the School of Comedy at Humber College, Ontario, one of the only North American academic institutions to offer a professional comedy-training program. “Comedy, by its very nature, tends to be anti-establishment. Studying comedy is fine if you like going to classes, being around people and doing homework. But lots of comedians don’t like authority and rules. Andy Kaufman, for one, wouldn’t have done well in our program.

But despite the widely-held belief that comedians are born not made, comedy training is flourishing all over the country, in a wide variety of styles and settings. Clubs are becoming a major resource for aspiring comedians, offering public showcases as well as workshops. Gotham Comedy Club in New York, for instance, advertises beginner, advanced and kids’ classes as well as seminars about emceeing. Independent comedy schools are expanding: in 2003 the Hyena Comedy Institute moved from a dingy basement in San Francisco to a large well-lit loft replete with stage and auditorium-style seating, and it recently added an intermediate standup class and sketch comedy class to its curriculum.

Beyond the world of standup comedy, professional sketch and clown companies also offer training programs. Second City, a Chicago-headquartered bastion of American improvised comedy, boasts six different training centers in the U.S. and Canada, with full-scale conservatory programs in performance and writing, geared toward future professionals, as well as beginner courses aimed at students with no previous comedy experience. Meanwhile NY Goofs, a New York-based clowning company, offers clowning workshops in character-building, rhythm, timing and the comedic set-up.

Comedy training is becoming so pervasive that even universities are beginning to offer both theoretical and practical diploma, certificate and degree courses in the subject. Humber College offers diplomas and certificates in standup and sketch comedy. The full-time undergraduate program, which includes course units on everything from acting technique to comedy scriptwriting, boasts an average of 60 students per year, with more than 20 students in the graduate program. In the UK, where comedy courses are more ubiquitous, 4 universities offer comedy as a practical program, with around 10 touching upon the subject as part of a general drama degree curriculum. At the University of Kent in southeast England, for instance, students can opt to learn about the history and theory of standup comedy as well as take practical classes. Beyond writing and performing their own material, the students also write a dissertation informed by their comedic process. Recent thesis topics include, “Can stand-up comedy challenge assumptions about disability?, “How does audience familiarity with a comedian affect their reception of his/her act?” and “What opportunities do the clash of the hi-tech world of computer generated imagery and the low-tech world of stand-up comedy provide for performance, and how can the integration of these two contrasting modes be successfully achieved?”

There are a number of different reasons behind the growth of comedy training programs over the last few years. With entertainers such as Chris Rock, Robin Williams and Ray Romano earning VIP status and multi-million dollar paychecks, more people are aspiring to be funny than ever before. Even on the club circuit, comedians are treated like celebrities: “People follow comedians out into the bar, even the new guys,” says Chris Mazzilli, owner of Gotham Comedy Club. “Today comedians are being perceived as rock stars. We’ve come a long way since the days of the court jester.” The popularity of television shows and movies based on sketch comedy techniques such as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and the films of Christopher Guest (Best in Show, A Mighty Wind etc.) are also turning increasing numbers of people onto the idea of developing a career in comedy.

Other people are signing up for comedy classes not because they aspire to be the next Seinfeld but because they think comedy training might enrich their lives in other ways. In a time when boring Powerpoint Presentations have become the modus operandi of corporate expression, management consultants and corporate lawyers are signing up for comedy classes by the SUV-load. “I give a lot of business speeches,” says Auren Hoffman, venture capitalist and Hyena Comedy Institute student. “I just wanted to make them funnier.”

But the rocketing renown of movie and television comedians aside, many of the reasons behind the rise in comedy training have little to do with the flowering of comedy as an art form in the culture as a whole. In fact, the comedy training business—which enjoyed a growth-spurt throughout the 1980s and ’90s fueled by televised standup shows and sitcoms and the flourishing of comedy clubs in even the smallest towns—continues to grow, despite a marked downturn in the industry in recent years. “At one time, 9 out of the top 10 shows were sitcoms, now it’s more like 1 out of 10,” says industry veteran George Shapiro, Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning executive producer of “Seinfeld” and manager to the likes of Seinfeld and the late Andy Kaufman. “There are fewer clubs now and fewer opportunities in TV as the number of comedy shows on the networks is about half of what it was at the end of the ’90s. It’s tougher for comics today.”

The heads of comedy-training programs are remarkably open about the reasons for their weed-like existence. “Training has grown in clubs because it’s a way to make money,” says Mazzilli, despite his assertion that revenues from kids’ classes offered by Gotham go only towards paying the teacher, rather than into the coffers of the club. “You don’t need any special equipment to have a class in improvisation. You just need a room. So it’s cheap,” observes Ron Woods, an alumnus of Second City who teaches and directs comedy in Los Angeles and Chicago and has appeared in a number of TV sitcoms and films, including “Third Rock from the Sun” and Babe. “Plus, there are a lot of people who thought they’d have careers as improvisers but they were wrong, so there’s a plethora of able teachers.” Meanwhile, according to Double, universities in the UK sometimes offer non-traditional courses such as standup comedy to prospective students as a way to differentiate themselves from the competition. Cynicism aside, there may be more to comedy training than keeping a few “Who’s Line Is It Anyway” panelists off the streets and circus clowns in red noses. Many industry professionals agree that while it may not be possible to teach someone to befunny, it is possible to nurture talent by helping aspiring comedians develop skills within a workshop setting and by giving them opportunities to perform. Indeed, as culture chokes on a thin diet of candy-corn reality TV, and hoary industry types get misty-eyed at the memory of the good old days when Jay Leno, Robin Williams and Rosanne raised the Barr, the need to see fresh, new comedic voices rise to the top has never been more urgent.

“Since there is a mystical aura around being funny – ‘you’ve got it or you don’t’ – many people don’t understand that there is a great deal that anyone can learn about crafting and performing a comedy show,” wrote comedian and teacher Greg Dean in an article “Why Take a Standup Comedy Workshop?” posted on his comedy training website, Greg Dean’s College of Comedy Knowledge (www.stand-upcomedy.com.) For Dean, a Los Angeles-based comedy teacher who counts Whoopi Goldberg amongst his list of ex-students, a good workshop offers a variety of benefits, including fostering discipline and providing a safe environment in which to try out (and fail at) new material, as well as insights into the basic techniques of joke-writing and delivery. At the Hyena Comedy Institute, which draws much of its inspiration from the Dean school of comedy, the first few classes focused on learning how to write particular stock joke-forms—three statements where the third is the punch-line, for example, followed by several weeks spent workshopping comic routines.

Other approaches consider the development of material to be secondary to the creation of a comic persona or point of view. “Material isn’t everything. Learning to be funny is all about learning who to be on stage,” says Double. “The breakthrough moment for my students comes when they go from emphasizing the greatness of their jokes to emphasizing who they are up there.” Guttman agrees: “find your voice first and then find the funny afterwards.” For Dan Vitale, a “Saturday Night Live” veteran who teaches at Gotham, developing a comic persona revolves around getting students “to connect with who they are.” To that end, he encourages his students to develop material based on their own personal experiences, “rather than talking about politics.”

Meanwhile, at Second City, being funny isn’t even the main goal. With its roots in the fabled 1950s cabaret-style review troupe The Compass Players, the aim of Second City’s approach, according to teacher Anne Libera, is the same today as it was back in the Compass days: “to teach people how to behave truthfully in a situation. This is the source of most comedy.” The same could be said of the NY Goofs approach to clowning. Director and teacher Dick Monday encourages students to find the vulnerable in themselves in order to bring truth to their performance. “The clown character is you – you don’t play a character,” said Monday. “It takes time to delve through the protective layers to find the pain. You have to be raw and accessible.”

If the various approaches to comedy have anything in common, it’s a firm emphasis on practice. Some teachers consider a knowledge of comedy history and theory to be important to a comic’s education, but when it comes to behaving truthfully, developing jokes or finding a comic voice, there is no substitute for a stage, a live audience and a stiff drink. “The best training is experience,” says Woods. “If you wanted to be a pro basketball or soccer player, you wouldn’t just train once or twice a month,” says Mazzilli. “Well, the same goes for comedy: You have to get up on stage and do it multiple times a week.”

To that end, comedy programs generally offer numerous opportunities for live performance. “The stage is very integral to what we do,” said Rob Chambers, executive director of Second City Chicago and training program coordinator. “Getting the immediate feedback of the audience is the best way of finding out if what you’re doing is funny.” Graduating shows, such as the one culminating the eight-week-long Hyena Comedy Institute course, are de rigueur amongst comedy courses, but the more intense programs usually get their students performing beyond the confines of the classroom many times, sometimes, in the case of the University of Kent’s program, as early on as Week Two. Often fostering links with local comedy clubs, comedy-training programs also habitually unleash their students on an unsuspecting public. The students of Humber’s comedy program, for example, are a regular fixture at Yuk Yuk’s and The Laugh Resort comedy clubs in Toronto.

Yet balanced against all these noble efforts to nurture the talk-show hosts and circus clowns of tomorrow, are the conflicting forces of reality and the marketplace. The entertainment industry, with its stupefyingly high barriers to entry, demands a great deal more than talent and hard work from anyone who thinks they’ve got what it takes to land even just a few minutes of stage-time at a provincial club, let alone star in their own “Comedy Central” special. Comedy clubs all over the country host showcases for amateur and early-stage professional comedians, but the selection methods are more often a test of dogged perseverance than talent. For example, in order to earn a 10-minute slot at the Wednesday night showcase of Cobb’s in San Francisco, comedians must call the club at three o’clock on the day of the gig. But with the 9 to 12 available slots filling up in less than five minutes, Sawyer said that it generally takes callers two to three months of calling every Wednesday before being invited to perform. “This demonstrates stamina,” says Sawyer. “Show business is all about being patient.”

Meanwhile, at New York venues like Gotham and Ha! Comedy Club, early-career comedians looking for stage-time have to do more than pick up the phone and patiently await their turn. As “barkers” or “bringers,” newbies are expected to drag audience members in off the streets. Bringing four people into Gotham gets you seven minutes of stage-time. According to Mazzillli, being a bringer is a rite of passage—an important part of a comedian’s development. “In order to develop as a comedian, you need a real audience,” Mazzilli says. “Clubs have bringers because no one is going to pay to come and see an amateur show.”

Ultimately, even the best comedy training programs can do little to mitigate the frustrating realities of the marketplace. Guttman, for one, is proud that Humber’s graduating shows attract “35 to 40 mostly four-star agents and producers.” But balanced against the undoubtedly useful industry interest is the risk of churning out cookie-cutter comedians performing to please the mainstream interests of TV executives, rather than working to take the art form into new terrain. “The problem is that we have to stay true to the spirit of what we are trying to do, without giving in to the demands of the marketplace,” observes Guttman. “It’s a fine line to walk and we have to be careful not to lean too much in either direction. We can’t afford to be stuck in an ivory tower. But we can’t abandon the essence of the art form either.”

Will Franken, a Bay Area-based comedian, believes that standup comedy college comedians are easy to spot on the live circuit because they’re all the same. “The Schools teach people a formula,” says Franken, whose impersonation of a bad comedy college student trying to deliver a formulaic joke is one of his funniest skits. For Franken, comedy colleges spend too much time trying to get students to focus on the standard post-Bruce style of conversational stand-up. This style—propagated by the comedy colleges and accepted as the status quo by the entertainment industry for the past 40 years—has become such an industry standard, he feels, that it’s difficult to break the mold. “What Lenny Bruce did was free and fluid, but the comedy schools teach this style as a formula, so it’s become stale and lost its magic.

A comedy college education may not be for everyone, but if nothing else, it can get students to explore their creativity and sense of humor in ways they had never imagined they would. Since graduating from the Hyena Comedy Institute, Casella hasn’t turned out to be one of those cookie-cutter comedians, driveling on about her boyfriend’s halitosis in a smoke-filled room. The comedy course simply challenged her to try out new, exotic things. On a whim, she recently entered the San Francisco 2004 Faux Drag Queen Competition dressed as a giant transvestite panda complete with ostrich-feather eye-lashes. Much to her surprise, she won the title. “I was the first inter-species entry they had ever had, so the judges didn’t know how to grade me,” she says. “I thought I would be disqualified. Who knew?”

Chloe Veltman is a British, San Francisco-based writer.

Copyright Theater Communications Group 2005