OUR CREATIVE PROCESS

Coming into this workshop, we knew we had to teach students about humor, and about performing in front of others and working in groups. We as workshop leaders love comedy, but neither of us are particularly experts in the field. So how do we teach people how to be funny? How do we teach people how to be creative? Creativity is not something that you can manufacture, or build, or force to happen. It is something that arises naturally in the right conditions, when there is space for it. Therefore, in our workshop, we spent the first few weeks doing activities to build community in our classroom, so that way the students would feel comfortable around each other and supported by one another, so that way when it was time for us to ask them to write comedy bits and perform in front of one another, it felt quite natural, even though we had only known each other for a few weeks. We also taught them basic theories of humor from Noel Carroll's book "Humour: A Very Short Introduction." Then, we moved into our unit on Stand-Up comedy, and we had to design a structure for our lesson plans. We read an article in our CPSA260 class about Active Classroom Learning, and about how the physical space in our classroom affects how the students learn. The physical environment of how a classroom is set up can influence how students learn, and how engaged they will be with the material (Rands & Gansemer-Topf, 2017). So, we decided to experiment with how we set up our classroom. We would move around chairs during class, and made sure there was space to stand up, move around and be active. We incorporated active improv games into our lesson plans to get the students used to performing and working together, and we also had them work in groups and discuss material together. They got practice writing and performing stand-up bits in front of each other. They also practiced giving and receiving feedback. Gabi taught us a feedback technique that goes as follows: "You did X, which did Y. If you did X, it would do Y". It forces the person giving feedback to made objective statements, and be specific in their feedback. We also taught students case studies about different Stand-up comedians, watched some of their material, and has discussions as a class about what techniques the comedians used, and what made their routines effective. After Spring Break, the students worked in groups to write group sketch performances for Arts Fest. When writing their sketches, they incorporated sketch writing techniques into their scripts, such as crossed conversations and dramatic irony. 

​

Sources:

Rands, Melissa L, and Ann M Gansemer-Topf. “The Room Itself Is Active: How Classroom Design Impacts Student Engagement.” Journal of Learning Spaces, vol. 6, no. 1, 2017.