Sketch writer and performer Griff Phillips putting words into action
Putting on the skits
A guide to staging a sketch show, by Griff Phillips
In London you’re never more than ten feet away from a rat or a writer. Lew Grade used to say, “If I throw a brick out of my window, chances are I’ll hit a writer”, and he meant it. And that was before email. With terabytes of comedy sewage flooding producers’ laptops every day, it’s small wonder our sparkling nuggets of sitcom gold sometimes go unnoticed.
So why not think outside the inbox and find other ways to get your writing noticed? One way is to film sketches and put them on YouTube. Another option is to organise a live sketch show.
Sketch shows are big right now in live comedy. A spot check of Time Out’s comedy listings for a random Thursday night gives five sketch shows: Teak Show at Private Eye Dining Rooms, Grand Theft Impro at The Wheatsheaf, Newsrevue at Canal Café Theatre, Pappy’s Fun Club at the Leicester Square Theatre, and Poodle Club at the White Hart.
And you can do it too - I managed it, and I’m an idiot.
It won’t make you rich or famous for a while, but you’ll learn how to write for a live audience, your sketches will be much sharper by the end of it and you’ll have a good laugh: because the one thing you need for a successful sketch show, even more than talent, perseverance and money to burn, is teamwork.
People you need
Performers
The most important people in the show. You can even manage without writers if you go down the improv route - but you always need the best performers you can find. A bunch of writers on stage who have never performed before is a guaranteed disaster. It’s okay to have a mixture of experienced and inexperienced people, but make sure the good performers have the main parts.
If you can’t get professional actors, get people who have done am-dram, or who have stand-up experience and are used to being funny on stage. You can advertise for performers on sites such as Gumtree or Craigslist, and also try spreading the word through Facebook and MySpace. Alternatively you can buy adverts in professional sites such as The Stage or Casting Call Pro.
It’s good to have a couple of sketches/songs written before doing this so that you have something to audition the actors with.
Writers and script editor
Most sketch shows are written by committee, and often the writers are also performers. But it’s important to have a single script editor responsible for putting the script together. Often the script editor is also the director.
During the development of the show, the script editor sends out “edit sheets” to the writers requesting new material as the need arises. The script editor is at liberty to throw out material at any point, request rewrites at any time based on problems or ideas that come up in rehearsal.
Director
You need an experienced director that has worked in theatre before, or at least worked with amateur groups. If necessary, the director can be one of the performers but it’s better to have an independent person. Again, advertise in industry publications if needed.
A good director can transform your show while a bad one, or none at all, can ruin it.
Sound and light tech
Whether you need your own technician for this depends on the venues you will be performing in. Basically, in a pub you just need a mate sitting nearby with a CD player. In a theatre or an arts centre, you want somebody who can work the lights and sound to do blackouts, fades, sound FX, intro music etc. Some venues will provide staff to do this. It is vital that ahead of the performance you have an accurate cue sheet to give them, showing all the sketches in order, listing cue lines for sound/light FX and the last line of each sketch. Don’t rely on other people to organise your sound and music clips.
There are plenty of websites that provide free sound effects, such as freesound.org and free-loops.com. It’s worth investing in software such as WireTap which records any sound played on your computer straight to your hard disk as MP3s (eg from playing YouTube clips).
In general, it’s best not to use too much sound and light trickery in your show. It will inevitably go wrong and wreck your ‘romantic date’ sketch when the sound guy accidentally cues up Darth Vader’s March.
Musical director
Some sketch shows such as NewsRevue include songs as a major part of the show. If you want to want to go down this ‘cabaret’ route, you can either use pre-recorded backing tapes, or get some musicians involved. Obviously there are practical restrictions here - a keyboard player takes up a lot of space in a tiny pub, but isn’t a problem in a theatre or arts centre.
The advantage of having a live musician is that if a singer misses a beat they can usually cover it up and keep playing! Also they can provide a lot of the linking and background music that would otherwise have to be done by a sound tech. However, this does add an extra level of complexity to rehearsals and you need to ensure enough time is devoted to getting the music right.
A good musical director should be used to working with singers to get the best out of them, and able to suggest appropriate songs and music for the show.
Props and costume wranglers
Don’t go overboard on props and costumes. They make scene changes a nightmare. I’ve seen great sketch shows where the cast haven’t had more than six prop and costume items between them. Whatever props and costumes you decide to use, someone - often the producer - needs to be in charge of sourcing them, storing them and bringing them to the performance.
Where props are shared, make sure you know in advance how they are going to be passed around. If your venue has a backstage or wings area, the prop/costume manager can double as a backstage manager on the night, making sure people go on stage at the right time with the props they need.
Producer
Finally, you need a producer. This is the person that makes the show happen. The person that books the venue, handles the money, does the marketing, and handles every crisis that arises from missing props to hissy fits from the creatives. Again, this role often doubles-up with one of the above roles.
Making it happen
The important thing to decide up front is what kind of show you want to put on. Is it pure sketch or a mixture of sketch, songs, and standup?
Most sketch shows vary from one hour with no interval to ninety minutes with a single interval. It’s better to put on 60minutes of good stuff than 90 minutes that contains 30 minutes of padding. If you aren’t confident of filling 60 or 90 minutes you might consider inviting other performers to open for you, although make sure that they are at an appropriate standard - not bad enough to wreck your show, but not so good that you can’t follow them!
Next, your show needs a hook, a unique selling point, and your team needs a name. “A Bunch Of People You Never Heard Of Perform A Bunch Of Random Sketches” is no good to anyone. But “A Trifle Funny present The Seven Deadly Sins” might get people’s interest.
This focus also helps the writing team - there is no worse brief than being able to ‘write about anything.’ Now you’ve got something the producer can sell. While the creatives get on with writing and rehearsing, the producer can start ringing up venues and trying to find a slot.
Finding a venue
Study listings magazines and ring around or visit every pub, arts centre and theatre in your area. Talk to them and find out what the procedure is for booking their performance space.
Understand what you’re getting for your money. Do you have use of the dressing room? Technical staff? Rehearsal rooms? What are the exact stage dimensions, and how many stage entrances/exits are there? You will need all this information when rehearsing.
Find out if any upcoming comedy festivals are planned, and talk to the organisers. They may be able to point you at a venue which would consider giving you a slot. Also, being part of a comedy festival gives you some free marketing.
Consider doing your show for charity. You’re not going to make money out of this at first, and a lot of venues are very supportive of fundraising shows. One arts centre I know of lets charity shows rehearse for free in their building and charges lower fees to hire the performance space for the show.
Some venues have arrangements with comedy promoters such as Amused Moose. It might be worth talking to the promoters to see if they can negotiate a slot for you for a percentage of the takings.
Some sketch groups organise guest nights where they invite other sketch groups to do short sets. You might like to consider taking your best 20 minutes to nights like these.
If all else fails, local venues like community centres, village halls and so on are glad to make a bit of money from being hired out. These are good venues for learning your craft in, before graduating to big name venues like The Albany.
Preparing the show
It’s important to be realistic about the timescale you can prepare a show in. If you are all new to this, and working around full-time jobs, it might take you six months or a year to create an hour’s worth of material. On the other hand, if you have a group of experienced writers and performers, and you are all working full-time on it, you might have something up and running in a couple of weeks.
The important thing is commitment. Everyone needs to have this show as a high personal priority. If they don’t, whether it’s because they have other projects on the go, or they aren’t really convinced about it, you need to drop them and get someone else.
You need a realistic rehearsal schedule that performers can commit to. Writers don’t need to be at rehearsals - you need separate writers’ meetings, and group meetings. Finally you need the script nailed down a month before your show so everyone can concentrate on performance during that final phase.
Marketing
There’s no point putting on a show that no-one’s going to come and see. At first, much of your audience is going to be personal contacts - family, and friends. But you need to promote each show as much as possible to build a real audience.
One sketch show I was involved in secured a long promotional interview on local radio. Get some posters made up, put flyers in pubs, cafes and bookshops. Make a website. Ensure someone is flyering around the venue on the night to pull in passing punters. Use Facebook and MySpace to invite as many people as you can.
Don’t invite TV producers or comedy agents until you’re ready for them to see your show. You don’t want them to see your opening night. Remember they’re comparing you to the top talent they work with already. You need to be on the top of your game before inviting the industry along - you only get one chance to impress. Depending on your level of experience, this might take five shows or 500.
On the night
Congratulations! You’ve done the hard work. You’ve booked a venue, invited an audience, written your lines and learned them. Stuff’s going to go wrong, but it always does. Relax and have fun. And make sure someone videos the performance, so that if any of the sketches completely brought the house down, you can put the footage online - although be aware that filmed theatre never looks that great on YouTube. More important is to have a permanent record of where the laughs came, and where they didn’t, so that next time round you’ll be even better. Break a leg!
Griff Phillips has written so-called comedy for stage shows such as NewsRevue, The Treason Show, The Sitcom Trials, Comedy Pit, and radio sketches for BBC7 and Radio Four. Last year he performed stand-up and sketch for the first time, and was musical director on a sketch show for Reading Comedy Festival. Benevolent producers can contact him on griff.phillips@gmail.com.
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