COMEDY WRITING WORKSHOP AT THE INDIA HABITAT CENTRE
Day 1 of the Comedy writing
workshop and the mixed audience were regaled by our Faculty who also happens to
be a well-known Stand-up comic.
The idea was to understand the
basic essence of comic writing and character building. Some of the points that
were covered were
-Satire eg. Jaane Bhi do Yaaron
-Believable Characters eg. Khosla
Ka Ghosla and When Harry Met Sally
-Situations eg. Most of the
sitcoms
The task for the 15 people
assembled there was to create a situation in 4 lines with the following
framework
a) SETTING
b) CHARACTER c) WANT d) CONFLICT
Out of the 15 some of the entries
which generated a lot of laughter are as follows
1. a)
Setting- A plane has crashed in middle of Africa
b) Character-A
middle age potbellied African man
c) Want/Statement-Do
you think we ate them all
d) Conflict/Statement-I
think Nigeria will need another football team
2. a)
Setting- Wharton ,University of Pennsylvania
b) Character-An 18
year old Indian Student Rahul has landed there after finishing his school
c) Want/Statement-I
want to get laid
d) Conflict/Statement-But
today is Tuesday
3. a)
Setting- A coffee outlet in Delhi
b) Character-A
middle aged Sikh Gentleman
c) Want/Statement-Sir
your order will take time, I will call you, can I have your name?
d )Conflict/Statement-Anthony
Gonzalves
The person who had created the
scenario had to keep quiet and the other participants had to interpret these
and there were so many different versions for a single scenario.
Day 2 awaits the enactment of
these scenarios with resolutions to the conflicts.
