 So thanks guys for being here once again, I'm so excited because we have Marty Cook and Matthew McMehan here They are from Emerson College's relatively newly found BFA and comedic arts program And so they're going to be talking to us a little bit about you know their work how they got into comedy What their backgrounds are and I think it's going to be really interesting because they have a really unique perspective both as Practitioners in the field and artists in the field as well as people who spend a lot of time You know teaching and with sort of the next generation of people who are thinking about these questions And I'll let them do more full introduction Emerson everybody I'm Marty Cook. I'm a professor in the visual and media arts department at Emerson I teach screenwriting primarily television writing So that's television writing for late night comedy writing for television and my favorite class is writing television pilots I'm also the director of the BFA in comedic arts, and that is the only program of its kind in the country. Yay And I'm the founding director of the Center for comedic arts at Emerson College So while I currently have a whole bunch of administrative duties I like to consider myself first and foremost a writer I've literally been writing since I was six years old and that journey has taken me from the little town In Cape Cod that I grew up in to the big studios and networks in Los Angeles to the battlefield in Afghanistan At least sort of and I'm going to talk more about that as we go on I've never written a play, but I've been told by many many people that television writing and play writing is actually They have a lot of similarities, and I think that that's true So I'm here to talk to you today about the culture of comedy about comedy is an art about comedy is a business And to weave in a few personal stories of my own highs and lows that have happened to me along the way So my hope is when you head home from Emerson You're going to feel both excited and encouraged to sit down and write that comedic play you've always wanted to write And If you haven't thought about writing a comedy well, maybe I'm going to convince you Matt I will convince you to do it or maybe even you got a drama that you're working on and you might have to this Consider turning it into a comedy. We're going to try to sell you on that as well Yeah, and I'm Matthew McMahon. I'm the assistant director of the committee guards program Marty's my role model I'm going to grow up to be just like her one day Yeah, I got my PhD in drama from Tufts University, and I specialize in French comedy historical French comedy Moliere and the like In addition to that I perform on a renegade improv team called neighbors at improv Boston Like they're performing tonight. You can see you can see me put my money where my mouth is tonight at 730 in Central Square Yeah, shame shame full plug. It's shameful in addition to that. I'm also freelance straw mature again I've done a great deal of new play development. So if anybody's looking for a dramaturg who specializes in comedy Let's connect And over the next 30 minutes Marty and I really wanted to talk about sort of three things one like Why is comedy an important field of study? Like why have a program that focuses an academic program that focuses specifically on comedy and why more regional theaters should be Promoting comedy and then booking companies To what are the special challenges? Facing the industry today unique to the army Lou and then three. How can we sort of overcome those challenges? So that leads me to the first question is Marty. Why why why is gonna be important? So people ask me all the time, why don't we start a comedy major at Emerson and The answers to fold but you know first and foremost Way back when I started this program the world needs more laughter and Keep in mind. I felt that way when Obama was president So as we look at the world today, it's it's even more divided and so The world needs more laughter. So let's start a major in comedy. Let's start a center in comedy The the other thing is when you look around the world Comedy is everywhere. It really is a second language for Millennials you turn on your television set Advertisements are now getting funny or at least a lot of them are trying to be funny, you know, I've got like guy I mean, I love Geico, but that's a perfect example. Why? because Laughter is a universe a universal language. It doesn't matter where you live in any country in any city in any town, it's It's really something that mankind shares and mankind craves And it's been this way since the beginning of time People love to laugh and more and more research shows that there are health benefits to laughter So we like to laugh for a reason because there's some physical benefits to good health that go through it So the second reason I want to create this major is really the most important one and it's a lot of what the major stands for Is that laughter opens hearts and minds? It really is a way in and it allows the performer to open hearts and minds and to tackle even the toughest Subjects that are often very very difficult to discuss and I always tell my writing students that good writing and I'm sure you guys all know this is about something and that means digging in at a much deeper level and really having something to say in the 90s I used to write for the show called full house and that was a really simple show and Yet before I did any episode I would sit down and I would say to myself What is it? What can I impart of what words of wisdom of knowledge of positivity? to you know to kids and The reason that worked and that show worked is because even for children laughter is the way in it's sort of like You know it's and with some deeper subjects It's sort of like it's the medicine and it's you give them sort of the medicine so to speak But laughter and comedy is sort of I look at it as the spoonful of sugar that helps it go down and helps people Digest what it is the more serious thing that you're trying to say um So you know the problems that happen back when full house was on the air and the way the world was It's nothing like it was today. The things that we're facing right now The issues are so much more serious. The country is so much more divided and so Comedy is really really necessary and I think it's actually very urgent a couple weeks ago We had the great pleasure to welcome Norman Lear back to campus. He's an Emerson alum And back he came at 96 and we erected a statue to him and He was somebody that really used comedy to to tackle subjects, you know head-on, you know racism sexism Religion politics rape abortion, you know, none of those things sound that funny But he was able to use humor To get at people's hearts and and to get in and to open them up to be ready to start a conversation Um, and so bringing these issues front and center He he put stuff smack on the table and if you guys are able to use humor in your own storytelling Not only do you have the opportunity to open hearts and minds? I believe that you actually have the chance like normally or to change hearts and minds and You know one of my favorite quotes about comedy and I read a gazillion of them is is from Mark Twain and he said Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand Great And part of my responsibility at Emerson College, and this is usually the very thing I tell my students in the first day of class I teach a class called the evolution of comedy Which covers almost 2,500 years of the history of comedy. We study the ancient Greeks We study the trickster gods from like Native American Yorubian Hindu mythologies We study the development of comedy in Japan and in China and in Europe in the United States So now there's in other words. We study an insane amount of material almost like way too much to cover It's one of the big challenges of that class is one How do we expand my students vocabulary while also giving them like one big take away? What is the the singular message about comedy that I want them to walk away with and one of the messages? I hope they clean is that there's no such thing in my mind of comedy There's comedies And that every culture every Nationality every individual so to speak Creates their own theory of comedy through the practice of comedy and that all of you content creators and playwrights Each work that you put out there in an essence makes a statement about what comedy it is what comedy is What's funny about it and what role it should have in society? So each of you through your work are creating a theory of comedy and One thing that connects all these cultures even though they seemingly have a variety of different theories and practices of comedy is that All these cultures do laugh They may laugh at different things. They may laugh at things in a different way But laughter is as Marty said sort of a universal language I'm not rather universal, but a very very human language It is as Aristotle says what separates us from the animals and you know lately There's been a lot of research about the sort of why we laugh from a physiological Perspective right like let's get at the biology behind why we laugh What is the psychology? The neurology behind laughter and how it works in the human body, which I think all this research is interesting Sure, but that's not like the question that really really fascinates me The question that really drives my work is who is laughing and at what? Who is laughing and at what in other words? What are the values behind any one joke? No matter how sophisticated and no matter how crass and how are those values? revealed through laughter I Find this question perhaps more titillating scientific ones because it in challenges it challenges us to investigate the work The way comedy works socially How it conveys ideas how it spreads ideas and even to a certain extent How it controls the way people think as a people how the way people behave as a people is in part done through comedy So in other words, how does comedy build culture? How do your comedies build culture? I was talking to an anthropologist at the Institute for Liberal Arts here at Emerson College about a lot of these ideas And she said to me that in a way you could look at the comedian as a type of ethnographer That a comedian through their comedies Documents their culture and to me this was a big like light bulb moment and aha and of course because One can look at almost any joke from like Seinfeld's like what's the deal with shower curtains or Richard Pryor's like discussion of police brutality in the 70s or even Michelle Wilson notation of Sarah Huckabee Sanders eye shadow, right and find in any of these jokes no matter how disparate they are no matter What level of political this is imbued in them? You can find a whole host of information in these jokes And it's actually quite astounding to sit back and dissect the complicated matrix of Information that goes into any one joke I mean I could make a simple poop joke right here and right now and reveal a ton of information about our anxieties about fecal matter Right when I release my students to go in a bathroom break. I always force of habit say let's go on a potty break I used to work at a daycare So let's go on a potty break and the students to giggle so like again What isn't that word potty that triggers students to laugh nervously something about the word potty rather than bathroom? Is affects us in a different way that is cultural information and the most Fascinating part about all of this to me Is that the jokes have to be framed in such a way to have to convey all of that information? Instantaneously in order to provoke laughter, and if the audience doesn't get it in that moment Then doesn't react to it in the moment then the joke wasn't good. It wasn't funny And so the comedian needs to know how to frame The issues and the information and how to pack an intense amount of information Into their jokes so that in such a way that the audience will laugh and that That audiences laugh reveals the truth of that information and the truth of those values in the very moment of the expression of that emotion So why should we study comedy and why should we see more comedies being produced? Because it documents our culture on an emotional level And anyone writing comedies is doing the exact work that I'm talking about So every comedy even the bad ones and maybe I would say especially the bad ones Have immense immense cultural value So, you know, that's sort of why why comedy is important to us But now we're going to move forward and talk about some of the challenges because comedy is not easy It's it's a very difficult field and Especially today We're the again the world is so polarized. It's like so how does a comedian? Make a statement which is again what we all are trying to do in our writing hopefully How do you make a statement in a world that's so polarized? Yeah, yeah, and I think generally like One of the main tasks or the first tasks a comedian should do in their work is try and unify the audience To get a mass body of different people to laugh as a whole To at least share a same Share a common ground a perspective Perspective that the comedian is creating through their work and comedians Manipulate audiences in this way they frame an issue in such a way to get the audience to think like them So we can laugh at the jokes that the comedians presenting, but this is like super difficult in Divisive times in which I think we are living And I look back at how comedians have done it in other divisive times and take the Greek playwright Aristophanes for example his play in this astrata. Are we all familiar with this astrata? Yeah, so that is an anti-war play at a time when Athens was that war with Sparta and Athens was losing that war with Sparta So coming out with an anti-war play at a time when your country is losing your men are dying and you're facing the annihilation of democracy That is a controversial statement to make right And how Aristophanes frames it is he turns it into a battle of the sexes So it's about women withholding sex from their husbands And then that is something that the audience no matter how they feel about the war can relate with can see sort of Everybody's had that interaction at least anybody and who has a domestic household in Greece at that time Another example is Richard Pryor's work in the 70s And and creating highly racially charged jokes in front of a mixed audience an audience that was both white and black and ridiculing both races the white audience members and the black ones Nintendo and trying to unify an audience that was at that time in particular not unified whatsoever Along racial lines right and how he does it is he triangulates the audience with him in the middle So that everybody gets equal share in laughing at each other But also telling you jokes in such a way that the black audience would laugh it at one way while the white audience would perhaps laugh At the same joke, but just in a different way But the common ground he establishes is that we don't see eye-to-eye on anything We're living in two different worlds the rules are not the same for these two bodies of people and Richard Pryor puts himself in The center is sort of a clown of clowns as the ultimate punchline in any of his jokes because he If you look at his special the Hollywood Bowl, he had just lit himself on fire After doing too many drugs right and he makes that like the center of his comedy. So he makes himself a target so like that's like An approach to uniting an audience But like how does one unite an audience in a time when like people refuse to be united? Like when I can't have certain conversations with certain family members I don't even bother because it's not going to be productive. So like how can one Create comedy at a time when people are so fundamentally opposite of each other Well, I think one of the ways, you know, it's really tricky, but I think one of the ways Not one of the ways, but I think it's the writer's job to do that You have to be able to step up to the plate and you have to take chances Because writing as you guys all know equals taking risks But it's like sure if you're going to write a play about, you know, Native Americans and you're not a Native American Then you're probably going to get criticized for it But there's ways around it. So, you know, you can if you do your research Part of it could, you know, that you partner with somebody who's a Native American and if you do that You're going to be able to I think have a more authentic voice So that's one way, but but you do have to be careful about You know, if you're if you're not part of because these in this day and age We're all if we look at it We all belong to a group in what you know, whether it's male and female different religions I mean different ethnic cultures. There's so we all belong to a certain group So it's like but that doesn't mean that outside of your group You can't be looking at the world and have something to say But I think as Matt was sort of saying you have to be careful How you're going to say it so that's one way But you know to not write what you want to write or to not comment on the world because you're scared of criticism In my book, you just have to move past that So when I talked to you earlier about the the how my writing took me to the fields of Afghanistan It didn't literally thank God, but I have a book. Here's my little plug I have a book on TV writing and there were two soldiers in Afghanistan on the battlefield Who read the book and they had an idea for a comedy about the war in Afghanistan? And yes, it was a comedy and the thing was they pitched it to me as sort of an update mash But the thing that's interesting about mash is when mash was on and of course, you know One of the finest shows probably ever produced in television history mash because of the time period Was about the Vietnam War, but they couldn't say it so they hid behind the Korean War Because the times were different, but these guys were living war in Afghanistan and they it was just they wanted to expose the lunacy of it and so They called me up and they said, you know, can you give us some advice? So I was going to talk to them one afternoon for a half hour Our call went our Skype went three hours because what they had to say was so fascinating that I said I want to partner with you guys, which is something I rarely do, but they were fascinating So we work together over Skype. We work through sandstorms. We work through missiles coming in You want to talk about guys that were committed? We would hear I would hear sirens going off like in the background and after like a couple hours of work They would say You know the sirens have been going off for a while Maybe should go to the bunker and I'm like, you know really are you kidding me? But that's how committed they were to getting this message out So I worked with them and then they flew home a couple of months later And we pitched it to Warner Brothers And I remember calling calling a contact at Warner Brothers and they and I said, you know Got a comedy about the war and they literally called me back a day later And they said are you sure you don't want the drama department, which is why I was saying to you guys earlier that if you're writing drama Sometimes to just reconsider how that might be flipped as a comedy Is an interesting way to go. It's an interesting thought process But the point is we went into Warner Brothers and they bought it But think about this if I walked in there myself and said I thought I had a comedy I got a funny one for you guys Let's do a comedy about the war in Afghanistan. If I didn't have those two soldiers with me I would I mean I I never would have gotten the meeting. So that's the way, you know, I wanted to talk about the war I listened to what they had to say I became just as passionate as they were But I couldn't I couldn't have taken that idea not that I would have but I couldn't have taken that idea and run with it on my own or anything like it because I wouldn't have had the The authentic voice that comes with it. So sometimes it's just about finding people That you can partner with So Yeah, yeah a point that I really like about Marty's story is that I think this is true more now than ever is that Who's making the jokes who's making the comedies matters more than ever? That an audience isn't going to buy a joke if you don't have this sort of cultural competence or cultural capital to be making That joke which some may feel sometimes limiting to a comedian it may feel constricting it may invite self-censorship In terms of restricting the kind of comedy we think we can be making or the kind of comedy We think we should be making but there's something empowering about this challenge too in terms of like who you are Limits your your experiences limit your world view your experiences limit your knowledge base your experiences limit Eliminate what you can say and how you can say it But this is what I tell my students at least try and find empowerment through the fact that you're disempowered in this Look at the fact that in who look that it's that who you are Makes your comedy matter more than ever And that there's always an end the top There's always an end to a topic if you invest in your stakes your position and your experiences as it relates with that topic To bring up Norman Lear again like if you want walked in and what If you walked in the CBS and pitched on the family is a show that was gonna Touch upon all the hot-button issues and preach to the audience about what's wrong with America that would have never made it But that's not the approach you cook I'm gonna talk about racism and sexism thing like that by putting my dad on screen my dad aka Archie Bunker as a small-minded bigoted man And Norman Lear didn't exclude himself from that conversation because Norman Lear claims that he was the meathead son-in-law Who would always get in arguments with no one there? And so what we're seeing in that show is Norman Lear using his own flaws his own limited perspectives his own limited Vocabulary to create comedy in terms of like how do we confront these issues or how are we failing to confront these highly? complicated issues in our own living rooms and so in essence He exploited his own limitations and used those limitations to tackle them in his comedy And so something I tell my students who are like 18 or 19 years old and don't have a lot of life experience a great place to start writing a Comedy is to think about picking a flaw an area of ignorance an area of limitation and Writing towards those limitations rather than against them find truth in comedy through limitations Because I don't believe comedy comedians are arbiters of truth I always roll my eyes when a comedian calls themselves a true speaker. I don't believe we're arbiters of truth We're deeply subjective deeply limited and deeply flawed creatures and to me that is funny Yes, so I mean I think the thing is you know So how do you you know navigate? comedy writing and And I think the most important thing you can do and this is easy for me to say More difficult to do but I do it myself. I hold myself accountable to this and that is It's really important to put it out there and to take a chance Because people that writers that hold back because they're scared I hate to say it are probably never going to go As far as they could because people will sort of look at it as bland It will come off as sort of constricted so you have to have the guts to stand up and know what you want to say and Put it out there But that said you also because I don't want you to race out and and get in trouble So yeah, you have to be careful living in the climate that we live in today So there are some safeguards you can take for example You know, one of the things you can do is when you're writing a joke look at You know Is there another way that the joke can be? Constructed and still make the same point this happens in my comedy writing classes not a ton But sometimes somebody will write a joke and they don't mean it to be offensive, but boy It's come off as offensive Sometimes just by flipping the joke and don't forget that a joke is two parts It's um, it's set up in punchline often people will just try to adjust the punchline Sometimes it's the setup. That's um, you can just flip so um, you know That's one thing that you can do look at the joke always remember a good rule of thumb Especially in this day and ages and it's cliche, but it's really true and it's you know Punch-up don't punch down. That's gonna keep you You know sort of out of out of trouble as much as one can be out of trouble as a comedy writer because you do have to Take those risks. The other thing you can do that I always recommend is Get yourself a writer's room when you got a script out Never put it out until you've sat down with a group of people have a lover for pizza Don't have a lover for alcohol because you want an honest reaction so I'm over for pizza and soda and and And have your work read and and don't ask, you know Your your parents and your grandmother and your aunts ask people that are gonna be real and tell you honestly what you need to know um and You also have to be honest to yourself with yourself when you hear your work read listen It are the laughs you were getting genuine or are they sort of? Forced are they non-existent? But also watch and see if anything that you've written, you know Makes people cringe a little because that means that's making somebody uncomfortable and And so you might want to rethink that joke because it makes your friends uncomfortable I can promise you's probably gonna make some some executives even more uncomfortable So the other thing that I want to just say before we we wrap up and and get some of your questions is One of the most important things I think that you can do as a writer and you probably guys all know this But it's worth me telling you anyways and that is To not fear to give yourself the first of all give yourself the opportunity to fail Because when you go out there and you put yourself out there you are gonna fail I can't tell you I you know I'm like yeah one of brothers get the Afghanistan project Well, let me tell you something what I didn't tell you is that was after you know a hundred people turned it down and You have to you know when that happens and you feel that rejection often We question ourselves and we we get filled with self doubt But give yourself permission to fail Because you know Failure can be a good thing and I will say a hundred people can turn you down It's a numbers game. Just keep putting it out there all you need is one person That's going to say yes So you got it you got to just sort of go forth as Fearlessly as you can and also this is going to sound a little sort of strange But it's my personal philosophy and this is true and I cannot tell you why I Can only tell you that my life experience Tells me that it is true from everything. I've ever done in the writing world and that is once you if you put something out With as much passion And as much energy and as much I won't take no for an answer no matter how scared you are deep down secretly What will happen is the powers of the universe kick in they do they kick in and good stuff Happens that you just couldn't ever imagine would happen So give yourself permission to fail Do check your comedy and be careful, you know that you're not doing anything super super offensive And then just put it out there and feel good about it Yeah, I love the idea of Marty hosting eighth grade style parties for her friends to read a comedy So yeah at this time enough of us talking Please if you have any questions about anything we've said about the comedy field in general or just the BFA program At Emerson and what were the kinds of things are doing any questions at all? I was fascinated when you talked about like really old school comedies like Trickster gods and things like that. What are the similarities between today's writing and that you see? I mean the same kinds of jokes are present In fact a lot of my students remark Are shocked by how like they're not pretty shit. The trickster stories are foul and profane and Trickster gods tend to cross cultures have enormous erections. That's a common trait that is that going to be on the live Yeah So you watch it and so my students are reading Essentially dick jokes that are thousands of years old Can see those that same kind of humor reflected in American vandal I don't know why that was the example I went to but I think that's because that's the kind of joke you see persist The idea of conning and manipulation Persists and I think the the kind of social dynamics like relationships that exist across cultures persist So it's really the topical jokes like the the here and now jokes cultural reference ones that don't land but the reason we can read a play by a 17th century Frenchman is because the the humanity of the characters is still funny So much of comedy so much of all the trip that it's been dominated by man Where do you feel the voice of women? Starting to surface in comedy and what effect does that have on your students or women trying to write comedy? Like is there a different type of comedy that I mean this is very generalized But I mean a lot of these dick jokes is because guys are right I will agree I really will agree historically speaking Part of the challenge of designing my syllabus is getting more female voices on it and I have to wait literally 1500 years before the first female comic play right Brought Smith from Gander chef and I actually talked to scholar. She's a 10th century Saxon I talked to a scholar of And who's like she's not a comedian. She's not a comedian at all But what she's doing is she's adapting a Roman playwright by the name of Terence Because Terence's plays feature prominently women as prostitutes and women getting raped as prostitutes Brats Vita underwrites that rewrites a lot of those plays so to celebrate the sacred virginity of nuts So her plays aren't exactly funny, but they are comic and structured But to the point about Terence Terence then becomes the standard for comic literature for hundreds and hundreds years through the Renaissance No, no, that's the name of the Roman playwright And what I tell my students is comedy has been written through the perspective of male desire and Featured in comedy throughout history is Almost every play a student came up to me and said I've been a victim of sexual assault Is there anything any material display that I should watch out for and I was like, yeah Let me make a list of plays that you should read a little more cautiously and I look I It was almost every play For about 10 weeks in because it was just so central to what comedy is And so when we when we see the kinds of behaviors comedians are practicing and getting out of war now It's because comedy as a institution historically has always Has always been about that Yeah, yeah Well, I mean, I think the other thing that's really encouraging and good is that More you know in more recent years people like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Amy Schumer and Samantha B I think that they have Broken broken and open for women and I think that comedic arts field for it more and more women are becoming interested in it and I get asked this question all the time in fact I just we have an open house here of Saturday for people who might want to apply to Emerson and I Get asked the same question from a young lady who was sitting there wanting to come and do comedy But she was really afraid that she was going to get here and be the only woman and I said guess what? 50% of our comedic art students are women and that tells me you know We have a long long ways to go But it tells me that the door is really opening and I think that it becomes up to to us to educate students and for the students to just go out there and start doing it And I have hope for the future I'm curious is the applicant pool Roughly 50-50 or is the applicant pool tips one way, but you accept no nope We accept because it's a small program We accept the best of the best and we don't look at gender and sometimes it with the way people are named today You know you don't know their genders anyways because people have such different names But nope don't look at it. So it comes out to 50-50 just about Here's the great as far as students applying to the program. What's what's in their essay question? What is it what's drawing them to this program? Well, it's not the essay that you should it's because we don't actually read their essays I mean, it's not that we don't admissions Admissions reads their essays, but what we do is we have a career and this is really fun We have they have to submit a creative sample so it can be them doing stand-up It can be them, you know performing improv a sketch. They've written a film. They've done Anything that shows us that they have the seeds of comedic talent and that's what a group of faculty look at and a Lot of whether they're gonna get admitted or not has to do with With that as it should it's like applying for you know a theater program on top of the essay question though Something that's been consistent the last three years is that the GPAs of our applicants have been Historically higher than any other program. So we're getting really high quality Really smart kids applying this program. We are and I think some people were surprised at that But I and I don't mean this the way it's gonna sound But I wasn't because to be a comedian you have to be Really smart because you got to think on your feet and turn around jokes really really quickly So but yeah, we have a lot of people that are like 4.0 and they're in the honors program. So yeah Sorry, well, yeah, yeah The essay question to is that just like what is there what's pulling them to you as far? I'm just curious about how they're finding the field and the program and as far as like Where are they coming from to come here? Yeah, join you on this journey. Do you find any current or similar stories coming from people or how they're drawn to comedy in general if they want to We're all we're sharing our our middle school Because again comedy is so hot like you know kids aren't watching news anymore They're watching late night and the beauty of late night is you can watch it in the morning So, you know kids aren't students Millennials aren't watching late night at night So comedy is really their second language And so with YouTube and all of the different and now you know you use your cell phone. You can make a short film They are Comedically driven and they're looking up to people in the business And you know Saturday night lying this has gotten you know quite hot again in these times and so I think that that Driven to want to naturally You know that's their thing to want to be a part of it And they find us because we are the only program of the kind of its kind in the country What's I think most comedians they practice comedy because they're constantly seeking validation Like I tell people like the first time I was ever told I was funny It was in fifth grade by my fifth grade teacher miss Gould. She told my mom I was funny and that's the first time it takes Frankly, I feel like I've spent the rest of my life trying to prove miss Gould right but I think It's like our students they don't even watch TV necessarily anymore I just talked to a prospective student like what kind of comedy are you consuming? He was mostly YouTube It's because they they're creating comedy they're putting it out there and it's like they come in I didn't have a portfolio as an 18 year old of comedy They're coming into our program with like oh, yeah, I've got a YouTube channel. I make I've got Spotify podcasts. I've got all these Screenplays I'm developing like what they're producing at a high volume already And I think it's like they're just coming here so they can continue focusing on it and get a degree Yeah, and they you know, some of them do stand up, you know at professional places and this kid came in last year And his father was like, you know Comedic arts. He's not going here. No, you know, he's not doing that and The kid then perceives if the father proceeds to tell me that he found out that his kid was sneaking out every night Of this bed and and going down to the local comedy club and performing stand up And it's like and I'm like and you're saying he's not going to come here He's here, you know, he needs to be here because that's his passion Yeah In any conversations with students we try to Encourage them to not write something or to write something else if they're maybe like unable to Yeah, I mean typically I find our students are more vigilant on that than we are Only a couple times in my experience. I mean in an improv class I I generally encourage my students to play how they identify Because improv is challenging enough. Let's not try and be other characters while we're learning the basics of this art form I've only one once Project of one of my classes is adapting a medieval farce. Those farces are horrendous They do not they do not punch up. They punch down And so sometimes students in their attempts to adapt older comedies don't adapt the values of those comedies And there's one play called the boy in the blind man which features a boy just lying and stealing from a blind man And the beating him up and that's the farce A student adapted that but didn't change any of it. I was like, well, this comedy doesn't land today This doesn't work today because you're Torturing a disabled person in this play that's not going to be funny But that rarely I found myself. I don't know about you, Mark Well, I think what you said that is true. There's a couple of things one I think that students here police themselves So, you know, when we're doing workshopping of pilot writing it sometimes there is an offensive joke in a script Sometimes it's there because the person meant it offensive And Sometimes they didn't mean it offensive. They were trying to get at a point and they just hit it wrong But students are very quick to come up and say wait a minute. I don't agree with that And and then that's a great time in the classroom to have a discussion And and again to see if you can wet the joke a little different way The other part of what you might have been asking is Do we ever discourage students from writing about certain? things Not Like we don't walk in and say here's a list of topics you can't write about But what does happen every once in a while is again because we want people to write from experience But sometimes what they want to write about is really coming from personal experience and They're not ready for it. It's too painful and in that in that case, you know, I try to say them Let's try to work through it. Let's give it a shot But I also keep saying, you know in my office run in the classroom, you know, are you ready for this? You know, let's have that honest discussion Is this something's really ready to write and sometimes they say I was just thinking about that I don't think I am or sometimes they'll say I Don't know what I want to and in that case, you know, I encourage them and just see see where it goes I wonder if your students are reading plays and seeing films that aren't comedies I don't keep a tab I think yeah, that's a good question and I I should ask that to them Because there is a danger of only consuming comedy in fact one of my improv coaches told me like Matt Your character you do improv too much and your characters are starting to sound crazy You need to hang out with real people And real problems right because your the characters are all characters. They're not like they're not real And I think yeah, if you only stick in a comedy vein, you may be close off the world I don't know. Yeah, I think that students do watch. I think they do watch. I don't know as much about plays Because again, you know, it depends where you go to watch a place. Sometimes, you know, they can be expensive and you know The internet is not so But what I do find but I do think that they see a fair amount of movies that aren't comedies They seem to be mass media Consumers which is good and bad but the thing that I can't for the life of me figure out and I swear to God This is true these kids have watched every television show that ever existed Even stuff that I have never heard of and other professors have never heard of and they watch every episode And they get into a discussion and they're talking about some show and everybody in the room has has heard about it and watched it And I don't know if this is where I think this might not be too healthy It's like I don't know how they can watch this much television and still, you know Communicate with people it's like so but they are mass consumers of media Well, I think I write funny plays, but the plays that formed me weren't necessarily comedy Yeah, that get our Carol Churchill or pinter. Yeah, so I would kind of hate for them to be exposed to the Yeah, I mean, well, that's what's the advantage of Having little arts institution. I'm just after how have their classes are comedy But there are other half of the classes. They're taking science classes. They're taking literature classes. They're taking philosophy classes So we I mean the benefit of coming here is yeah You get to practice your comedy and get a well-rounded education at least that's the goal And that's the hope because you're right that kind of stuff can really inform comedy. I mean what Not same chef chef David Mamet told a room full of tish students To drop out of their major because to become a great player I you should do anything but study player writing right and I don't agree with that Entirely, but I think yeah, you need to you need to be a well-rounded person You need to understand the world in a deep way to write really Yes, but like in the pilot ready class that I teach there's drama writers in there, too So they are getting exposed to both and I agree with you. That's that's totally important Maybe two more questions. I say I hand back there and then Julie Yeah You so much answer the question though I'm Webster from Jamaica And he's also the comedic arts assistant I'm in the graduate program But I personally want to congratulate the effort that this was possible a degree in comedic arts So the question was what other courses would complement comedic arts or is it holistically coming No, but yeah, you answered it you would have done other courses For example, I am doing the theater education program. I personally would have wanted to know how to teach coming In my own practices in Jamaica So the possibility of graduating students our students in other departments being able to take courses Are you asking if there is yes Right now it is an undergraduate degree Because we sort of we launched the minor then we want to launch the major now. We're launching a comedy center. So Down the road. Yes, but since you live with us you can come do whatever you want I rotation Julie you want to wrap this up? Well, I it's kind of a big question One of the things I have noticed a lot I'm a drunkard as well also from Texas for Jumbos. Oh, yeah Well one of the things I've noticed is that as we are inviting more people to the professional theater table who have traditionally been underrepresented What we're finding is that They're not following the same rules that we learned in white institutions in particular or male institutions in particular And so something like the structure of the joke or the structure of the sitcom or the structure of Moliere Has been used as a pattern or patterns for their different forms Yeah, and I'm wondering especially with the students that you're working with How you're both teaching them, you know a traditional structure I imagine like the thing to riff off of but also leaving the door open for them to innovate as Themselves on there. It's kind of huge I'm obsessed with the breakdown of Structure as sitcoms in particular they get these kids are watching YouTube videos which live outside of time They live outside of networks. They live outside of executives And so the form has been split open and I'm wondering Yeah, I mean what I tell students is like that's sort of why I take like a Try and give a global perspective on comedy and tell them that there's no like thing called comedy and that The way it's practiced in India and Japan and China The dramatic structure of those places wildly different than something they find in Europe So that there's isn't like there isn't a formula or that there are formulas, but these are all tools they can use I also think because they're not watching comedy on conventional networks per se That they are seeing groundbreaking comedy and they that's actually the kind of comedy that excites them the play that they read in My class they really adore is ugu wa Which is just an insane play, but they like it because it's insane and they it reminds them of Eric Andre who's doing similar absurdist Surrealist kind of stuff on Comedy Central that it's almost unwatchable sometimes and how it breaks from structure But I think you're you hit on something very important that comedy rewards formulas But in those formulas are value structures, and that's a problem So I think you're right so huge question and one that should be Well just to come off of that when I teach because television is formulae and While network may be you know a dying Place They're looking at places like Netflix and Amazon as you know the hot places that they want to work for and And it's really similar and so I actually am the structure queen Because what I find with students I mean these kids are young and so if they don't have if they don't understand Structure their stories just go all over the place And so I really make them adhere to structure With the idea and the understanding that first of all Executives still look for it, but I also think that you have to understand rules before you can break them And so I I want them to understand what structure is and how comedy structured Before because otherwise they just go down this path They become sort of a jumbled mess, and I think that the next level of What they're going to do is now that you understand structure now you can use television However you want you can break those rules come up with some new ones because I do think it's the people Often that do the different thing that you know are the standouts because you don't want to mimic just what's on television But I do think they have to understand structure Some so we're at time. Thank you guys so much for being here. Thank you