Comedy Studies

So, in my day job, I help out with the administration of Comedy Studies--a full semester's worth of training in comedy at Second City, with credit given by Columbia College. And I help out in the most drudge-like ways--making sure applications are handled, helping kids understand consortium agreements, that kind of thing. I do, though, get to meet them all when they come in the door and I do a little orientation and help them figure out campus. That's fun. . . because, you know, for the most part, they're all already really funny. And when they first meet, it's as if the most burningly important thing in the world to get done is to out funny one another.

Well, last night, I was final in town for one of their final performances at the Second City Training Center Theater, so Dan and I went. Ordinarily, I fear a number of things done by young people--musical theater, oboe playing, stand up comedy, improv, tap dancing. I fear them, because there is the possibility of them being very very very bad. I think it's endearing whether they're good or bad, but I am a pretty empathetic person and I get easily overwhelmed by embarrassment on behalf of other people. Well, dumb to even have those worries last night.

Those kids were AMAZING!!! So, funny and smart and funny. Both cohorts of students were great, but the second group was so weirdly meta in their funny--poking fun at vaudeville, poking fun at the improv form, poking fun at the act of acting, all while still being really funny and entertaining--that I'm still thinking about how smart they were.

Impressive stuff. And as it turns out, even doing mundane things like handling applications for Comedy Studies, makes you kind of a V.I.P. at the event. We didn't have reservations, but we totally got seats through the director of the Training Center waving us in past the guy with "the list" (Thank you, Anne!). And Jason, my super nice counterpart at Second City, brought Dan and I free cokes. . . but they arrived looking like this:

Even the drinks were funny. Yah.