A one-page workshop for brainstorming and improvising comedy scenes. We'll do a series of exercises to learn each of the key concepts that goes into creating a comedy sketch, and then put it all together to improvise full scenes.

The Process

Every great comedy sketch follows the same underlying structure. This workshop breaks it down into five simple steps:

• Base Reality — start with a normal, grounded scene that establishes how the world works.
• Introduce the Unusual Thing — the first instance of absurd or weird behavior that breaks the base reality. One player is the Comic Character who introduces it and commits to it; the other is the Straight Character who reacts honestly, like a normal person would.
• Justify the Unusual Thing — explain why the behavior makes sense from the character's perspective. Turning a single absurd action into a consistent pattern of logic is what creates the comedy. The Unusual Thing and its Justification form your Premise.
• Heighten the Premise — make the scene progressively more absurd. Keep asking "If this is true, what else is true in this world?" and let the premise spiral into chaos.
• Full Improv Scenes — put it all together to improvise complete comedy sketches from scratch.

What's Inside

• Step-by-step exercises for each concept — introducing the unusual thing, justifying it, heightening the premise, and improvising a complete sketch.
• Premise Prompts — a big table of prompts to spark unusual things and absurd premises: ridiculous confessions, out-of-place behavior, wildly inappropriate reactions, unexpected character traits, and more, each with a pile of funny examples.
• A complete worked example so you can see a scene built one beat at a time.

Great for:

• Improv practice — drill the fundamentals of "yes, and", commitment, and heightening.
• Party game — play with friends and build hilarious scenes together.
• Game Masters & roleplayers — sharpen the improv skills that make your NPCs and scenes come alive at the table.
• Writers & comedians — practice the craft of structuring a comedy sketch.

You only need 2+ players and your imagination. Grab some friends, pick a prompt, and start building scenes.

Come join our Discord community to play improv workshops with us!