17 June 2009

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Listening to: Death Cab for Cutie, "Cath..." Apparently this song was inspired by Wuthering Heights. I whipped through half of the book yesterday when I was supposed to be writing. But it was for a good cause because book club is on Sunday.

So for the past seven weeks I've been taking this class on Tuesdays, "The Comedy of Life, Death, & Art" over at Kearny Street Workshop. Here's the blurb that sucked me in:

"Life doesn't try to be funny; it just is. Life is tragedy with embedded comedy, and vice versa. The purpose of this interdisciplinary (but mostly writing/performing) workshop is to develop creative work with an emphasis on discovering and emphasizing the comedic elements; to identify and explore comedic concepts/principles; to integrate comedy into writing and performing; and to develop skills in terms of both writing and publicly presenting your work.

The workshop will introduce participants to a variety of comedic work, including creative nonfiction essays, film, music, standup comedy, sketch comedy, and other genres. Participants will develop a new piece in their chosen genre over the eight weeks, and much of the workshop time will be devoted towards workshopping individual pieces while also introducing and exploring relevant concepts."
So the classes are over and there's a public reading happening next Tuesday, June 23rd. I'm still working on my final piece, and I have to seriously learn how to enunciate and read out loud, but I'll totally be ready by next week so come check it out. My fellow classmates have written great stories and while my sister and friends don't think I'm funny, I swear you'll laugh at least once during my piece. Or maybe not.

Our fantastic workshop leader, Samantha Chanse, is doing her solo comedy show, "Back to the Graveyard," this weekend. I'll be at the Saturday performance and you can get tickets here. She's awesome, we're going to be awesome, and you can be awesome too if you join us.