Monday evenings from 6:30-9:00pm
8/19, 8/26, 9/4, 9/9, 9/16, 9/23, 9/30
No class on Labor Day (9/2); We will meet Wednesday, September 4th instead.
Early Bird pricing through August 2
Regular price effective August 3
Space is LIMITED to ensure an intimate experience. We recommend signing up EARLY!
Refund and health policies can be found here.
Learn to successfully conceive and write comedy in a few different formats from an accomplished comedian who has been writing, performing, and teaching comedy for a few decades.
Can you teach someone to "be funny?" No more than you can teach a squirrel to sing. But you can teach someone how to "build the funny." You can show them the most effective ways to select, present, and pay off their best comedic ideas.
This course will cover crafting comedy in three categories.
1) Humor: the wit and quick culling of a presented premise as might be seen on a late night talk show segment or in a humor magazine piece
2) Character Monologue: the creation of credible characters based on real-life inspirations, harvesting what is funny about them (physically, vocally, behaviorally, or all of the above), and framing a monologue moment for them that capitalizes on those comedic qualities
3) Sketch: a blend of the above. the writing of situational comedy for one or more voices that can be silly and absurd, as in a commercial parody, or slice of life where it is funny because it's true.
This course will combine in-class assignments with encouraged at-home rewrites based on feedback from the instructor and other members of the class.
The course will culminate with a table read of the best material generated over the session for an invited audience.
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Tom Chalmers has been writing and performing comedy since back when Stranger Things was set. He and his friends wrote scandalous satire for his high school newspaper. At college, Tom founded an improv comedy troupe, Six Milks, at Columbia University and spent his summers in Chicago studying with Second City and Improv Olympic. Tom then went on to study at The Groundlings four-level training program in NYC, where he was a company member, teacher, and eventually Artistic Director. He directed weekly sketch-comedy reviews that featured students who would go on to write for such shows as Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, among others.
Tom has written for SHOWTIME Television, TBS, and USA Networks. He has also written corporate comedy for Sony, Bank of America, Abbott Labs, and many more. Since coming to Asheville, Tom has been part of a sketch comedy series with Scott Bunn called Scotch Tomedy, and he directed and co-wrote a post-quarantine comedy review at The Magnetic Theatre called "Sketches Or It Didn't Happen."
Tom has taught at NYU, Columbia, and now at Warren Wilson College. He currently teaches writing classes through the Flatiron Writers Room and a variety of classes at the Asheville School of Improv (which he started). He is a member of the acclaimed local improv comedy troupe, Reasonably Priced Babies, and is host and producer of the monthly series, Listen to This, stories and more on stage, based here at Story Parlor. He could go on but he won't.