For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been participating in KSW’s “Life, Death & Comedy” workshop, led by Samantha Chanse. Our public performance was last Tuesday and while it was certainly a nerve-racking experience, everyone pulled off their best showing and afterwards we all had the glow of accomplishment. I think for all budding artists, the chance to showcase your stuff is always appreciated, especially when it’s presented and worked on in a safe space.
Above: Sam Chanse gives a performance pep talk.
Sam was amazing at getting us comfortable from day one, which helped everyone open up to honest critique and a sense of teamwork. The end goal of the eight week workshop was to produce a piece that we would share with the world. While some of our initial efforts were directed toward highlighting the comedy in our work, we quickly learned that being funny has nothing to do with trying to make jokes, trying to keep things light, or trying to force a smile from the audience.
What we learned was that humor often bubbled up from inherently unfunny events, such as death, or depression, or losing romantic love. Life tends to bring out the absurd and the laughable in the least likely situations and that, when highlighted and told well, can be hilarious. So we wrote about life experiences rather than “think of something funny and write about that.”
We read a variety of pieces by people like Danny Hoch, Augusten Burroughs, Sarah Vowell, and Marga Gomez. We brought in things we individually found funny, via YouTube videos and other writings, for show-and-tell and then analysis. We touched on the philosophy of tragedy and comedy, tapping into Aristotle’s Poetics. One of my favorite in-class activities was creating captions for blank New Yorker cartoons, using different comedic attitudes and techniques.
For me, as a first time workshop participant, it was eye opening to see how much a piece could change from week to week through the revision process, and always for the better. That improvement was a testament to how much the entire class put into each other’s work, giving useful feedback and pointers. By the time our rehearsal came around, everyone was still tinkering with their piece but we turned our attention to reading in front of an audience.
Above: Chuck Lacson on stage.
“Don’t shift too much. Enunciate. Pause for breath (or clarity). Exude comfortableness. Hit your high points.” Performance always comes with some nerves so this was when our comfortableness with each other really paid off. We supported and reinforced one another with advice and evaluations all throughout rehearsals and even right before I read, I received empowering pep talks from Sam and Chuck — and then I bounded on stage and promptly forgot everything. But that could be fodder for a future story too.
The entire experience of working with the six members of my class, of being challenged to read in public, and of finding support from the community has been awesome. Thanks KSW!
Above: (from left) Jon Yang, Yasmine Gomez, Linda Park, Sam Chanse, Chuck Lacson, and Cathlin Goulding.
BIO
JON YANG has slummed it in the valley with the Wakefield twins; slumber partied with Huey, Dewey and Louie; joined Krakow in stalking Angela; and climbed every mountain with the Von Trapps. He’s just wrapped up his second book, “Exclusively Chloe,” a fiction novel for teens, and is hard at work on his third one. You can find him online at www.jonyang.org.
Imin Yeh’s “Good Imports” (left) are currently in the 