by Jerry Corley – Founder of The Stand Up Comedy Clinic
This weekend Jerry Corley’s Stand Up Comedy Clinic visited Las Vegas, hosting a 2-day comedy seminar in the ‘Sin-City, ‘ at the Alexis Park Hotel and Resort, and if writing jokes is a sin, then there was a lot of sinning going on. In the 2-day seminar, Jerry Corley, the Joke Doctor himself, shared joke writing techniques galore, demonstrated techniques on the stage and deconstructed sample sets on video from Jerry Seinfeld, Dave Chappelle, Bill Hicks, Brian Regan, and George Carlin, giving the students an insight to the ‘greats’ using the very techniques he reveals in his seminars.
The results were really inspiring. To watch the attendees improve their joke-writing skills liiterally overnight was just incredible. From Saturday to Sunday, the attendees, (some of them working comedians), churned out one and two-liners on material ranging from trending topical events, relationships, religion and the economy, like they were professional writers in a writers room at NBC. In short 15-20 minute, workshop-style sessions, these impressive students wrote 7, 8, 10 jokes and more and they were jokes that truly reached the level of commercially acceptable jokes that you might hear on the late night shows. Seven to eight jokes might not seem like a lot, but think about it…they wrote these jokes in twenty minutes. Just think of the possibilities if they would have had an hour or two!
I know some professional comedians (headliners) who haven’t written a new joke in 12 years. These guys and gals were writing them in 20 minutes.
In the last segment of the last day of the seminar, the students got up on the stage and performed some of their own material and recieved suggestions and notes from Jerry and some of the other students in the room. The suggestions were helpful and insightful. Some of the students who didn’t have a lot of material learned that by just talking about your life, your goals, and your frustrations, you can generate some good comedy material for your routine.
Keep an eye out for one of Jerry Corley’s weekend comedy seminars coming to your town. If you are interested in stand up comedy or comedy writing, you won’t want to miss it.
