Students joke for, not about, professor in new course

Students joke for, not about, professor in new course

New UCLA Extension course teaches stand-up basics for aspiring
comedians

By Rodney Tanaka

Long weeks of preparation culminates in this one moment: the
final exam. Your palms sweat, your heart beats faster. Your grade
rides on your performance. You step out onto the stage and grab the
microphone. The time has come for you to tell jokes.

The final exam for the UCLA Extension class "Performing Stand-Up
Comedy" is just one of the ways to test your comedic skills. UCLA
Extension offers three classes that hone students’ comedic talent.
Professional comedians share their knowledge of stand-up,
improvisational and television situation comedy. The classes, which
began last week and run weekly through March, draw a diverse group,
including people with careers varying from professional acting to
practicing law and medicine.

Andy Goldberg, a founding member of the improvisational comedy
group Off the Wall, shares his expertise in "Improvisational Comedy
Workshop."

"My main approach is to find humor in the situation," Goldberg
says. "I stress character development for prospective improvisors
because I feel if you have a number of characters in your comedy
bag of tricks, then you are prepared for a lot of different
situations."

Goldberg believes that a good improvisor must keep up with
current events and must study human behavior. "It helps to have a
good sense of humor," Goldberg says. "You have to be uninhibited
onstage and look at things a little off center."

Students take Goldberg’s class for other reasons besides
becoming an improvisational comedian. "A lot of writers use improv
techniques because you begin to hear the dialogue in your head,"
Goldberg says. "Then there’s people who just want to be less
inhibited generally in life, they want to try and open up."

Aspiring writers and actors alike may also attend Cynthia
Szigeti’s "Acting in Television Sitcoms." Szigeti demonstrates the
process of working on a situation comedy. Students learn about
reading for a part,work through how to break down the script and
how to make different stylistic choices. "I teach them how to honor
the writing," Szigeti says. "Most of the people who produce the
sitcoms are also writers, so the words are very important."

Szigeti has taught such performers as Late Night host Conan
O’Brien and Julia "It’s Pat!" Sweeney. She sometimes invites former
students, such as "Friends" star Lisa Kudrow, to talk with her
classes. "The students like that because they get to ask questions
about different issues that may come up," Szigeti says. "They also
get to talk about their favorite shows."

Students learn about what these guest speakers must go through
during a mock audition session. Szigeti teaches them audition
techniques and has them audition for parts.

"Performing Stand-Up Comedy" also offers participants a chance
to perform in a professional theatre environment. Students finish
the class by performing in a comedy club to an audience of their
friends. "Its so exciting when they do their final performance,
which is the first time they’re really in front of a packed
audience," says instructor Shelley Bonus. "It’s fabulous to see
when they hit with their first joke and their faces light up."

Bonus believes that after the laughter and applause for their
final performance subsides, her students are prepared for the
sometimes brutal world of stand-up comedy. She tries to paint
neither a pretty nor ugly picture of stand-up. She tells her
students that they must fight to get onstage and not get
discouraged when they get bumped for a more established
performer.

"There’s no time limit if this is their passion, if it takes 50
years they must stick with it and eventually they will get it,"
Bonus says. "This is not a craft that they can only do once a week
in my class. They can only take what I give them and do it over and
over again to perfect the performance art."

An important part of perfecting a stand-up act is discovering
what works and what fails. Experimentation can result in bombing
onstage. "If they’re bombing it’s usually they’re doing something
that’s untrue, either in the delivery or in what they’re talking
about," Bonus says. "There comes a period of self-discovery, and
out of their frustration they usually do something that’s
absolutely hysterical."

Bonus admires the courage needed for comics to look truthfully
at themselves. "The people that do the best are the bravest people,
those really willing to bare their souls and take risks," Bonus
says.

Her class, and the two other comedy classes, may or may not
contain the next Tim Allen or Roseanne. Regardless, they "all have
heart," Bonus says. "Anybody that takes the class has really
confronted themselves and has the guts to follow a dream."