Stand-Up Comedy for Writers: Session 4

Stand-up is a powerful tool for writers in any genre. It teaches you to simplify and reshape your material, isolate your voice, and understand how ideas land with a live audience. Over time, you’ll become punchier, more engaging, and more fluid on your feet. But stand-up works very differently than writing on the page—and many writers struggle to translate their work into performance.

This workshop is designed for writers who are curious about trying stand-up, and for stand-ups who write more than they perform (or want to). Each session explores an essential element of comedy that also applies to writing more broadly. We’ll focus on how it works in stand-up, then zoom out to what carries across genres.

The sessions are designed as a series, but each can be taken as a stand-alone class. The series will culminate in a “class show,” where participants from some or all sessions can share their work in front of a writer-friendly audience at Bank Square.

Comedy doesn't have to be well-rounded. The key of great comedy is that it neglects many of the rules for what someone's supposed to do. But it does have to be well-shaped: you need to get extreme in the right places, and put the right counterbalancing forces in to make it work. Participants will take a look at their own work and figure out how to elevate it: either do what only they can do even more to where they're able to create as distinct an impression as possible, or blend in another aspect of their voice and personality to create a new combination.

David Iscoe is a writer, comedian, and educator based in New London. He spent over a decade as a professional comedy writer in New York City, writing for The Onion, Funny or Die, and various stage shows at the UCB, Annoyance, and PIT theaters, as well as performing sketch, stand-up, and improv. He then got his fiction writing MFA at Bennington College, where he learned an immense amount about writing and started a novel which he will finish once he doesn't have to work so damn much (hopefully while he's still alive). He now teaches writing, communication, and community engagement classes at Eastern Connecticut State University, CT State Community College, and Mitchell College.

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