Thirty-three short funny skits, blackout sketches, and curtain raisers, most of them based on holidays, and appropriate for school and home performance.

What makes something funny? This book shows how humor can be analyzed without killing the joke. Alex Clayton argues that the brevity of a sketch or skit and its typical rejection of narrative development make it comedy-concentrate, providing a rich field for exploring how humor works. Focusing on a dozen or so skits and scenes, Clayton shows precisely how sketch comedy appeals to the funny bone and engages our philosophical imagination. He suggests that since humor is about persuading an audience to laugh, it can be understood as a form of rhetoric. Through vivid, highly readable analyses of individual sketches, Clayton illustrates that Aristotle's three forms of appeal—logos, the appeal to reason; ethos, the appeal to communality; and pathos, the appeal to emotion—can form the basis for illuminating the inner workings of humor. Drawing on both popular and lesser-known examples from the United States, United Kingdom, and elsewhere—Monty Python's Flying Circus, Key and Peele, Saturday Night Live, Airplane!, and Smack the Pony—Clayton reveals the techniques and resonances of humor.

From the creators of CBC radio's This is That; Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly and Peter Oldring.From CBC Radio's most beloved satirical comedy team comes This is That: Travel Guide to Canada, a hilariously outrageous parody of the travel guide genre and what it means to visit Canada. Searching for a weekend away with the kids? This is That: Travel Guide to Canada will teach you how to navigate the twelve petting zoos of Etobicoke and how to avoid pickpockets in Kamloops. Planning your summer holiday? Keep in mind that the city of Brandon, Manitoba, is closed for annual maintenance between July 12 and August 19 and that tipping your server in Swift Current is offensive. Presented in the familiar casing of a traditional travel guidebook, � la Lonely Planet or Rough Guide, This is That: Travel Guide to Canada takes readers on a farcical - and unbelievable - journey from coast to coast to coast to coast to coast. This faux guide also includes essential travel tips, such as useful Canadian phrases to locate the bathroom, best places to portage, and most spectacular malls above sea level.

He has written and produced comedy/talk shows for over fifteen years. Now four-time Emmy winner Joe Toplyn reveals his proven methods of writing for late-night television in this one-of-a-kind insider's guide. Toplyn analyzes each type of comedy piece in the late-night TV playbook and takes you step-by-step through the process of writing it. His detailed tips, techniques, and rules include: * 6 characteristics every good monologue joke topic must have* 6 specific ways to generate punch lines* 12 tools for making your jokes their funniest* 7 types of desk pieces and how to create them* 9 steps to writing parodies and other sketches * How to go after a writing job in late night* PLUS a complete sample comedy/talk show submission packetAlso use this comprehensive manual to write short-form comedy for the Internet, sketch shows, magazines, reality shows, radio, advertising, and any other medium.

These short skits with casts of two to six players cover a wide variety of topics and drama styles. Some skits are comic for learning comedy technique. Others are situations for students to learn more about themselves and others. The dialogue is crisp and easy to perform. Very little planning and memorisation is required to stage these skits. Many may be staged readers theatre style. They work well in a classroom and they may also be used in a theatrical setting. Sample titles include: Funny Isn't Always Funny, Gossip Among Friends, The Principal's Office, The Band and Party Girls, They can be staged and directed by the students themselves. Excellent for competition or comedy revue shows.

This accessible and engaging text covering sketch, sitcom and comedy drama, alongside improvisation and stand-up, brings together a panoply of tools and techniques for creating short and long-form comedy narratives for live performance, TV and online. Referencing a broad range of comedy from both sides of the Atlantic, spanning several decades and including material on contemporary internet sketches, it offers all kinds of useful advice on creating comic narratives for stage and screen: using life experience as raw material; constructing comedy worlds; creating comic characters, their relationships and interactions; structuring sketches, scenes and routines; and developing and plotting stories. The book's interviewees, from the UK and the USA, feature stand-ups, sketch comics, improvisers and TV comedy producers, and include Steve Kaplan, Hollywood comedy guru and author of The Hidden Tools of Comedy, Will Hines teacher and improviser from the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and Lucy Lumsden TV producer and former Controller of Comedy Commissioning for BBC. Written by “the ideal person to nurture new talent” (The Guardian), Creating Comedy Narratives for Stage & Screen includes material you won't find anywhere else and is a stimulating resource for comedy students and their teachers, with a range and a depth that will be appreciated by even the most eclectic and multi-hyphenated writers and performers.

Comedy YouTube stars, the GEM Sisters, need your help to solve their very first mystery. Real life sisters Giselle, Evangeline and Mercedes never set out to be detectives, but when an adorable dog named Bingo goes missing they try to help. Soon the GEM Sisters discover that the dog isn¿t missing at all. He¿s been Pup-napped! Will the new Sister Detectives have what it takes to stop a criminal and save the dog before he¿s lost forever? Read the fun adventure to find out!

Uncommon Dramas, Skits and Sketches is an all-in-one, easy-to-use handbook for producing unforgettable dramas for youth groups of any size. Feel like a stage pro as you choose from a wide variety of scripts that will make messages memorable and teens inspired to turn on the drama! Perfect for youth meetings, Sunday School, retreats, camps, parent nights, lock-ins or special events. Includes CD-ROM with reproducible scripts.

"This collection of short theatre dialogues can be performed almost instantly, with very little preparation, spontaneously and on the spot. Written primarily for drama students from 12 to 18 years old, the sketches and skits can also be used in middle- and high-school classrooms as well as by professional and nonprofessional theatre-training groups of any age."--Back cover.