Comedy sitcom: writing and performing for TV and radio: advanced

Learn about creating characters, scenarios, writing scenes, pitching sitcoms and entering competitions. This course gives you the chance to perform monologues and scenes in City Lit’s TV & radio studio. Improvisation is used to support the development of characters and scenes for sitcom. (Beginning improvisers welcome!) The production work in the studio will give you the experience of bringing sitcom scripts to life and gain an understanding of the actors point of view. The course is run by Chris Head who has twenty-five years experience in comedy. It is a development from the beginners and intermediate sketch courses but anyone with some experience of writing and/or performing comedy is welcome.Learn how to create characters, set up the situation, construct a plot, write scenes and dialogue. Learn too how to write a treatment, pitch your ideas and how the main competitions work and what they are looking for. Understand the different writing demands and production styles of ‘single camera’ sitcoms vs multi-camera sitcoms filmed in front of a live studio audience.This work will be supported by the exploration and analysis of classic sitcoms such as Fawlty Towers, Father Ted, Only Fools and Horses, The Office, Toast of London, Ab Fab, The Thick of It, Outnumbered, Raised by Wolves, Detectorists and we will consider some US sitcoms such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld… and more.