Carolines on Broadway presents a stand up comedy class for teenagers (13-17)

 

Are your friends always telling you how funny you are and you’ve thought about trying “stand-up” but don’t know where to begin? Learn from a working pro in a supportive environment. The final class is a performance at Carolines on Broadway, at which you will receive a broadcast quality DVD of your performance! The benefits of this class far exceed the obvious enjoyment of just doing stand-up. The extra benefits include disciplined writing skills, public speaking skills and overall general confidence.

All students will meet with Carolines Director of New Talent. This unique class will start June 25.

 

Call 212-462-3200 or go to www.manhattancomedyschool.com

 

 

"Oceans Thirteen " screenwriter Brian Koppelman is a recent Manhattan Comedy School graduate. Congratulations Brian! If your not familiar with Brian's work check out his first hit "Rounders". "Rounders" is a very powerful and original movie that is credited with being one of the catalysts that started the current poker explosion. The www.ManhattanComedySchool.com is NYC's number 1 school for anyone who is thinking about starting a career in Stand-up comedy but doesn't know where to begin.All classes end with a performance at Carolines on Broadway.

On Friday, June 1st I went to see "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee". It had some very biting funny lines, some great characters and a few very pretty ballads. Former President Bill Clinton arrived with his daughter Chelsea about ten minutes before it started. He was seated in a very prominent prime seat and was noticed by a few people seated close by who started snapping pictures and asking for his autograph. The producers obviously new he was coming because they wrote in at least one line about Chelsea becoming president. The nature of the play lends itself to rewriting lines to fit a particular performance or current story in the news. The spelling bee judges are reading words the actors have to spell from cue cards so its easy to fit in tailor made jokes for a particular performance. I like that because it makes the show fresher for the cast and if you see the play more than once it makes it more interesting.I would recommend the play but it suffers from what I think a lot plays suffer from. The fact that the producers feel the play must be a certain length. So instead of editing out the weak songs and weak lines and having a tightly edited one hour fifteen minute great play, they make a one hour forty five minute overly long play that should have been edited better. I think that producers are afraid to produce something that is to short. Anyway, at the end of the play Clinton walks on stage and the 950 people that didn't notice him before burst into a loud spontaneous applause.

There were two articles I read about the whole Imus fiasco that I highly recommend.

 

The Wall Street Journal’s Friday April 13^th cover article “Behind the fall of Imus a digital brushfire” is the best blow by blow coverage of how the entire story started and how it exploded. Without taking sides they give an absolutely fascinating hourly and day by day account of the complete story and how it progressed from an unplanned comment and simmered for two days before it exploded. Frank Richs column in the New York Times Sunday April 15 Week in Review is also worth reading. And Finally Sheckmagazine.com has an in depth and powerful take on the whole episode.