Free Introductory to Stand Up Comedy Workshop
Term: One session (two hours)
Tuition: Free

San Francisco – Wednesday May 16th at 6 PM
San Jose Improv – TBA

If you ever thought you were funny, you were absolutely right! This Free Introductory Workshop explains exactly what we mean. Being “funny” is not a special ability of gifted people; it’s an easy-to-learn skill that can be taught to anyone.

This workshop introduces you to all that the SFCC offers in the subsequent 5-week Beginner Class with an explanation of the writing sessions, advanced class audits, admission to pro shows, open mic stage time at the Purple Onion or San Jose Improv, in-house open mics, comedy workbook, membership to our online group and a network of funny friends, etc., etc.

You will be given free comedy theory and shown a proven formula that illustrates the structure of all comedy spoken, written, filmed or displayed silently. So, bring your questions, your skepticism and your willingness to learn!!

Meet teacher and SFCC founder Kurtis Matthews, who will talk you through the process. This interactive presentation is fun, funny and informative. And sometimes, there are free snacks. Where else can you go to receive comedy instruction, ask a bunch of questions and get some bad nutrition all for one low price of nothing?

This free workshop is limited to 15 students, with the corresponding Beginner Class limited to the first 20 people to register.

Feel free to check out a description of the Beginner Stand Up Workshop!
If you know our history in American stand up and are ready to invest in yourself. You can enroll now and pay via the homepage!

http://www.sfcomedycollege.com/beginner-stand-up-classes/

If you just want the free intro you can register below or call us 415 921 2051.

Please indicate San Francisco or San Jose, the dates desired and any other info in the message section of the form below!!!

San Francisco classes are at 442 Post, 5th floor near Union Square.
San Jose classes are at the San Jose Improv 62 S Second in San Jose.

Term: Five weeks

Upcoming SF Sessions: May 23rd – June 20th  at 6 PM
Upcoming San Jose Sessions: April 29th – June 3rd

Beginner Stand Up Class – The Technique Workshop

Working from The Stand-up Comedy Workbook, which you receive as part of your tuition, you will learn how to cut through writer’s block, build a premise and generate endless punch lines for that premise until you find the one that rocks. The Technique Workshop is a required prerequisite for the Performance Workshop. Even professional comedians with years of experience take this class to improve existing skills and push themselves in new creative directions. In this five-week workshop, you will learn to apply the Joke Diagram, association lists, organic development, characters and POVs to create your own jokes.

You will learn:

· Material generation techniques (Structured and Organic)
· Ranting (Improvisation)
· Riffing (Improvisation)
· Storytelling and Bit Construction
· Character Development (POVs)
· Staying connected to audiences
· Finding your voice on stage
· Eliminating self-criticism
· Stage fright
· Rehearsal
· Performance

As part of your tuition, you will receive: (1) The Step by Step to Stand-up Comedy Workbook, (2)audits of performance workshops at the SFCC, (3) discounted admission to performance showcases and special events, (4) Free admission to SFCC Pro shows and San Jose Improv headliner shows, (4)guided comedy writing sessions, (5) Membership in our online community, and (6) Stage time every week.

Class size is limited to 20 comedians. Pay via the home page and we will send a confirmation of your spot with the discounted rate or call for more info 415 921 2051.
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Even professional comedians and speakers with years of experience take this type of training to improve their existing skills, learn new unorthodox yet effective techniques or push themselves into new creative directions. Every successful comedian or humorous speaker has writers and other funny people in their network that help them succeed. Let us be your network and get to work for you and with a free initial consultation. What do you have to lose?

If you want to learn how to be a killer stand-up comedian or hilarious speaker in your own time, this is your solution. If you aren’t making strangers laugh or being paid for your sense of humor, then you probably aren’t as funny as you’ve made up in your mind. Let’s get to work!

Great Reasons to Work with Us:

1. You live in Guam, Europe, Africa or a place that may or may not be found via Google Earth.
2. You live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you have some comedy experience, but you’d like to skip the SFCC beginner class take the advanced classes and work out with our comedians weekly at the Purple Onion and the San Jose Improv.
3. You are too busy to make group classes and need training that works around your full schedule or you just want to SKYPE us from your couch!
4. You want all the perks of being an SFCC student without being in a group setting, including writing sessions, grad show, video review, character class, networking and the stage time.
5. You want to develop your skills quickly.
6. You want teachers who still perform and are actually relevant to the stand-up comedy industry in 2012.
7. You want a money-back guarantee*** and a free consultation because we’re confident that we can help.

What to Expect:

Your lessons will be specifically created to address your act/speech/presentation and performance issues. You will receive and learn:
1. Four to six full hours of one on one attention tailored to your needs.
2. Thousands of dollars worth of original material that you may use in your act/presentation forever.
3. Acting and comedy development exercises based upon your specific needs.
4. Focus on a strong stage persona and being present in every room
5. Help with stage fright and other mental blocks that keep you from sharing your unique sense of humor.
6. Material development via multiple structured and organic techniques
7. Riffing techniques and skills to assist in the creation of in the moment comedy
8. Point of view development via exclusive techniques not offered from any other training facility in the world.
9. Group writing, character classes and stage time based on your availability.
10. Inclusion in the exclusive online SFCC comedy group
***if you don’t find us hilarious and helpful after the free consultation and our first meeting, we’ll happily refund your money minus the one class fee.

Term: Four 1 hour to 1.5-hour  sessions tailored to your schedule. Take them in a year, a month or in four days!!! Take them at our facilities in San Francisco and San Jose or work with us online from anywhere in the world.
Tuition: At our training facility in San Francisco – $325, At the Improv in San Jose – $325, Via Skype, Phone, YouTube and Email – $300

Inquire here or call us 415 921 2051

The Only Multi Night New Talent Showcase in San Francisco!!! Three nights a week at the Purple Onion!
Purple Onion
140 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133

Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 7pm, $7

SFCC Underground
The San Francisco Comedy College (SFCC) is proud to present this weekly new talent show at the legendary Purple Onion! Come laugh your head off at the finest new stand-up comedians in town while you enjoy delicious drinks and good food. Line-ups change every week. It’s a restaurant with a full bar and a showroom with a no drink minimum.
Want Tickets? http://bit.ly/sBXu7w

Learn how to use your untapped humanity and embarrassing moments in a way that can reach a wide audience. You will finish this workshop able to fill in the blank, “———– is the story of my life.”

Each student should leave class with a basic concept of how to make painful, strange or even mundane experiences from their life funny. The students learn to dig inside their own lives to find humorous, relatable material, which unifies an audience making them laugh at their own experiences through the student’s performance. Instructor, comedian and UCB faculty member Margot Leitman will work with each student honing their stories to a performable place. Students will leave class with a strong direction of how to structure a story for comedic purposes. Additional focus will be on getting through the fear of being judged for our honesty. In the past, many students have left saying, “I can’t believe I told a room full of strangers about that and I can’t believe they all laughed!”

Comedic Storytelling with Margot Leitman
TBA
12-2pm: Beginning Storytelling $50
2-4pm – Advanced Storytelling $50
$80 for BOTH

San Francisco Comedy College
442 Post St., 5th Floor
San Francisco

Margot Leitman is currently teaching Storytelling 101 and 201 through the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre. After creating this program initially for Comix (www.comixny.com), Margot quickly saw the demand for comedic storytelling and moved her program to the UCB, the top comedy school in NYC. After a year and a half at UCB-NY, Margot’s classes were so popular she was able to travel to Los Angeles and teach storytelling out west for a semester at the UCB, Los Angeles. Margot has taught additional storytelling workshops to children ages nine to 16 through Kids N Comedy. She has taught master classes to the Ithaca College Theatre department and works privately with a variety of clients on a regular basis.

Margot’s television credits include various characters on “Late Night With Conan O’ Brien,”"Jimmy Kimmel Live,” VH1′s “Best Week Ever,” ESPN’s “Cheap Seats,” AMC, the Style Network, E!, Comedy Central and NBC Broadband. Most recently, she can be heard as the voice of “Fox” on the new Spike TV cartoon “The Team.” Her monthly sex-themed storytelling show “Stripped Stories” (co-hosted by Giulia Rozzi) has a cult following, has been called “Fresh, honest and raunchy” by BUST Magazine and was a featured Village Voice choice and Time Out NY critic’s pick. “Stripped Stories” tours nationally, selling out venues across the country. Margot has been featured in Glamour magazine, and the books “Fifty Dates Worse Than Yours” and “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Jokes.” She has written online for the Lifetime Network, CollegeHumor.com, EHow.com and in print for Playgirl Magazine and the New York Press. She is a three- time Moth Storyslam winner and a 2010 winner of the Moth Grandslam.

http://www.margotleitman.com
http://www.strippedstories.com
http://www.sfcomedycollege.com
http://www.sfcomedy.com

Margot’s true passion for comedy and storytelling helped me find the underlying meaning to my story and hilarious moments.
- Corrine Ellingson, Filmmaker

My coaching session with Margot made me realize the amazingness and uniqueness of my story. She helped me get to the core and allowed me to figure out the true narrative and humor within it. Last but certainly not least, she totally empowered me to perform my story with chutzpah (as we say), which I did, and I was awesome! Margot changed my life. No seriously, she did.
- Rachel Fleit, Producer

Margot pulled a story out of me I never knew was there! Don’t be surprised to see me in Margot’s next class!
- Emmy Rivera, former student

This class was amazing. I have never performed before and after taking this class I feel I have the confidence and knowledge to get up onstage and give it my all!
- Michael Jaros, former student

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One Person Show Classes with Mark Lundholm

Mark Lundholm has had his own Showtime Comedy Special, appeared on Comedy Central, and written and starred in three on-man shows. The most notable of his one-man shows is the fiercely funny and severely dysfunctional stage play about chances and choices called Addicted: a comedy of substance. After playing and extended run off-Broadway and receiving great reviews from The New York Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press, Addicted was voted into the top position as the most highly recommended off-Broadway show ever in New York City by the Wall Street Journal’s Zagat Theater Survey. The show was extended in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Miami and San Francisco, grossing $3 million (for someone else) to date.

TBA

Class fee: $250

San Francisco Comedy College
442 Post, 5th Floor
San Francisco

Date TBA - Class is limited to 20 students!

http://www.sfcomedycollege.com
http://www.marklundholm.com

One Person Show Classes with Mark Lundholm

Mark Lundholm has had his own Showtime Comedy Special, appeared on Comedy Central, and written and starred in three on-man shows. The most notable of his one-man shows is the fiercely funny and severely dysfunctional stage play about chances and choices called Addicted: a comedy of substance. After playing and extended run off-Broadway and receiving great reviews from The New York Post, the New York Times, and the Associated Press, Addicted was voted into the top position as the most highly recommended off-Broadway show ever in New York City by the Wall Street Journal’s Zagat Theater Survey. The show was extended in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, Miami and San Francisco, grossing $3 million (for someone else) to date.

TBA

Class fee: $250

San Francisco Comedy College
442 Post, 5th Floor
San Francisco

Date TBA - Class is limited to 20 students!

http://www.sfcomedycollege.com
http://www.marklundholm.com

In order to be considered for a free beginner stand up session, send a note explaining why you or the person you are nominating should be given free training. Be authentic and provide as much information about the candidate as possible.

Every month, we will publish the name of the recipient on this blog and update you as they progress through the comedy ranks!

November 2011 Recipient – Justin Ivey (Santa Cruz)
Justin has moved into the Advanced Comedy ranks in San Jose and continues to Improv as a performer!

December 2011 Recipient – Aaron Dabney (Sonoma)
Aaron is finishing beginner training in San Francisco and has appeared onstage multiple times.

January 2012 Recipient – Graham Wilson (San Francisco)
Graham has just started his beginner class in SF. We expect big things from him!

Send us something compelling and good luck!!!
What’s the catch? There isn’t one. Just be in the Bay Area for the 5 week training!!!

Common misconceptions about comedy training and what this is going to be all about!

No one asked me to write a blog. I wish more comedy instructors would be honest and say that. Generally, they start these things with “I’ve had hundreds of requests,” “People ask me everyday,” “Mail has been coming to me from Nova Scotia,” Blah-blah-I’m-kind-of-a-big deal-blah, and so on. It’s as disingenuous as the information some of them provide.  The truth is that the stand up world is small and the industry, although alive, is going through a major transformation.

My goal with this blog is to provide a real world assessment of stand up in America and give you some great tips along the way. If you choose to follow along, we’ll be here every week with new information for you to use.

If you are reading this, then you are one of very few. You are a brave soul and a special person that dreams of creating laughter and speaking your opinion to the masses.  Pretty narcissistic, eh?  Perhaps, but that’s an issue that you should probably bring up with your therapist. Lucky for you, there is generally not a stampede of people who want to get on stage and become professional comedians.  However, many people are wise enough to know that they probably need a little help when speaking in front of people to garner laughs and some who just might want help to be funny enough to create better and deeper relationships with any type of audience.  Everyone is welcome here and thanks for reading this far. 

Here are some common misconceptions by new people entering the world of funny:

1.    I have a great sense of humor already and I don’t need assistance!

Unless you are getting laughs from strangers who are paying you to make them laugh, it’s possible you don’t really have a great sense of humor. Frequently, laughter is given to a person out of respect, fear or as a way to show a person’s affinity for you. We all think we have a great sense of humor but until it’s put to the test of a paying audience, we are probably misguided.

2.    You can’t teach a person to be funny!

This is a protective form of denial that people use to not better themselves. Becoming funny is something taught and learned in this lifetime and there are techniques that are employed by funny people that are not used by those that are not funny.  We’ve been taking people off the streets and teaching them how to be hilarious for the last 12 years. However, you need to be teachable to learn the lessons. If you can’t train with us, please find someone in your town who teaches comedy for a living. 

3.    Either you have it or you don’t!

This is a ruse mostly employed by professional comedians who are trying to hide the fact that anyone with desire, patience and willingness to be teachable can also be funny.  I think we’ve all learned since the comedy crash of the ‘90s that anyone can get on stage and generate as many if not more laughs then the “talent” being jammed down your throat by one particular (Yes, only one!) cable channel and a few producers who want comedy in 2011 to be edgy, insulting and a temporary rush for an audience with no attention span. Let’s face it: If a TV network wants ratings, then they have to come up with a version of stand up that competes with car chases, cop shows and the three (yes, three!) channels devoted solely to food. 

4.    Comedy training is a scam!

I love this one as our techniques have created funny people for over a decade. This claim is generally made by new talent comedians with less than 5 years of experience or by people who are so insecure that they can’t fathom the fact that they possess no talent that differs from anything that one off the streets could bring to the stage. There are many fine comedy training facilities in the US with proven track records! Feel free to do the research and set your ego aside.

5.    Comedy teachers are failed comics!

 The call to teach others is a noble field. Few are decent at it and most do not offer technique. Being a great comedian and being a great comedy teacher are two different skill sets. The majority of comedians are so caught up in their own drive for attention that the idea of stepping out of themselves to help others is a leap too big for most of them to make.  There are many great comedians who can only give their opinion of what is funny or describe their path to funny but have no technique to develop a sense of humor in others. Just as there are many great athletes who are terrible coaches, there are many great comedians who are terrible teachers. Frankly, I love watching new comedians succeed when they are doing comedy for the right reasons; because it’s great fun and they like creating joy in others.  Eddie Brill, the talent coordinator from the “Late Show with David Letterman,” has said that we learn more from teaching then performing and he is so on the money there.

I’m not sure how to define “failed” in this instance, but I still perform and I get laughs every time I get on stage, as all of the staff at the SFCC does. There is a huge difference between being competent on stage and having fame or TV credits.  The funniest comedians tend to remain undiscovered, especially in a television comedy world that is driven by train wrecks.  There are many comedians who attack comedy training out of fear, judging all comedy teachers to be “failed” comedians. Unfortunately, this judgment only serves to demonstrate their fears and insecurities rather than providing a true basis for criticism. 

We’ll be blogging here every week about all things stand up.  Please feel free to send questions, comments and poorly thought out rants to comedydoc@aol.com.  I’ll be posting the best responses here.

Thanks for reading, 

Kurtis Matthews, your friendly comedy instructor!

Kurtis is one of only two instructors in the United States who offer “process-based” comedy training that anyone can use to be funny. His seminars have been widely applauded by the National Speakers Association of Northern California, The Harvard Club of Silicon Valley, Laugh Lovers of Oakland, The Great American Comedy Festival and the Scottsdale Comedy Festival.

As well as being a great comedy teacher, he can also be seen nationwide as talent in the Comedy Addiction Tour (www.comedyaddictiontour.com) and in the UK as the star of BBC1’s “Find Me the Funny.”

Register here or call us 415 921 2051