The Upright Citizens Brigade knows comedy, but more than that, they know how to coach aspiring comics and average joes alike on the ins and outs of how to create your own stand-out, unique voice. Led by UCB founders Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, this series features conversations with experts in the field including Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, Ben Schwartz, Lennon Parham, Jessica St. Clair, Andy Daly, Bobby Moynihan, and Nick Kroll, among others.

They say you can’t teach stand-up comedy, but you can certainly give a lot of good advice. The best comedians in the business share bits of advice and full-fledged stories to impart the lessons they learned treading the boards, hitting the road, and of course, on occasion, bombing.

The New Comedy Bible is a step-by-step, no excuses manual for writing, performing, and launching your career as a stand-up comic. Written by Judy Carter, the author of The Comedy Bible (2001), which was called by The Washington Post and Forbes as a “Comedy Essential”. This new book, penned in classic Carter’s style - part career coach and part comedy dominatrix - has 100 percent new content.

Author Scott Dikkers will tell you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, number one New York Times best-selling humor author, professional public speaker, and successful cartoonist. In this definitive joke-writing handbook, he'll teach you comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes.

The Second City has launched the careers of celebrated comic performers such as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and produced award-winning content. But it's the actual improvisational process developed and honed over the years by The Second City that has become its legacy. Players master an ability to cocreate in ensembles using philosophies that celebrate a "yes, and" approach.

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.

Bob Odenkirk’s career is inexplicable. And yet he will try like hell to explicate it for you. Charting a “Homeric” decades-long “odyssey” from his origins in the seedy comedy clubs of Chicago to a dramatic career full of award nominations - with a side trip into the action-man world that is baffling to all who know him - it’s almost like there are many Bob Odenkirks! But there is just one and one is plenty. Featuring humorous tangents, wild characters, and Bob’s trademark unflinching drive, Comedy Comedy Comedy Drama is a classic tale told by a determined idiot.

Does your mind blank in conversation and create awkward silence? Do you run out of things to say and struggle to keep dialogue flowing? (A) Conversation isn't scripted, (B) it's 100% unpredictable, and (C) it can be terrifying at times. How do you prepare for such a thing? By learning how to apply improv comedy techniques to roll with any punch and improve your conversations and social interactions.

From one of the world’s most celebrated humor writers, this easy-to-follow, step-by-step book lays out a clear system for producing living, breathing comedy characters that audiences will fall in love with.

This book has helped land Nickelodeon series regular roles, and helped performers appear on NBC’s America’s Got Talent, Comedy Central, Showtime, comedy festivals and clubs across the country, and to being featured on SiriusXM! The techniques in this book have been used with comedians from ages 8 to 80, and can help you find your comedic voice! Throughout this book, you will uncover the unique characteristics about yourself that are funny. Further, you will build extraordinary self-confidence through this art form. You'll find not only your funny but yourself.

Sanford Meisner was one of the best known and beloved teachers of acting in the country. This audiobook follows one of his acting classes for 15 months, beginning with the most rudimentary exercises and ending with affecting and polished scenes from contemporary American plays. Written in collaboration with Dennis Longwell, it is essential listening for beginning and professional actors alike. Throughout this audiobooks, Meisner is a delight - always empathizing with his students and urging them onward, provoking emotion, laughter, and growing technical mastery from his charges.

While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).

Robert McKee's screenwriting workshops have earned him an international reputation for inspiring novices, refining works in progress, and putting major screenwriting careers back on track. Quincy Jones, Diane Keaton, Gloria Steinem, Julia Roberts, John Cleese, and David Bowie are just a few of his celebrity alumni. Writers, producers, development executives, and agents all flock to his lecture series, praising it as a mesmerizing and intense learning experience.

Comedy is king. From multimillion-dollar TV specials to sold-out stand-up shows and TikTok stardom, comedy has never been more popular, democratized, or influential. Comedians have become organizing forces across culture—as trusted as politicians and as fawned-over as celebrities—yet comedy as an art form has gone under-considered throughout its history, even as it has ascended as a cultural force.

Language learning is seen as something incredibly difficult, and most speakers of English are brought up with the idea that we English speakers just aren't good at learning languages. But what if this isn't the true story? What if you could easily learn a new language and have fun doing it? In this book, I pull back the curtain to reveal the mindset and methodology of a polyglot. This book will dispel the myths, lay the foundations of the correct mindset for success, and inspire you to commit to learning that language you've always wanted to master.

The Upright Citizens Brigade knows comedy, but more than that, they know how to coach aspiring comics and average joes alike on the ins and outs of how to create your own stand-out, unique voice. Led by UCB founders Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh, this series features conversations with experts in the field including Amy Poehler, Adam McKay, Ben Schwartz, Lennon Parham, Jessica St. Clair, Andy Daly, Bobby Moynihan, and Nick Kroll, among others.

The Second City has launched the careers of celebrated comic performers such as Tina Fey and Stephen Colbert and produced award-winning content. But it's the actual improvisational process developed and honed over the years by The Second City that has become its legacy. Players master an ability to cocreate in ensembles using philosophies that celebrate a "yes, and" approach.

Divided into four sections - Status, Spontaneity, Narrative Skills, and Masks and Trance - and arranged more or less in the order a group might approach them, the audiobook sets out the specific techniques and exercises which Johnstone has himself found most useful and most stimulating. The result is both an audiobook of ideas and a fascinating exploration of the nature of spontaneous creativity.

At the height of the McCarthy era, an experimental theater troupe set up shop in a bar near the University of Chicago. Via word-of-mouth, astonished crowds packed the ad-hoc venue to see its unscripted, interactive, consciousness-raising style. From this unlikely seed grew the Second City, the massively influential comedy theater troupe, and its offshoots - the Groundlings, Upright Citizens Brigade, SNL, and a slew of others. Sam Wasson charts the meteoric rise of improv in this richly reported, scene-driven narrative.

Master the Art of Improv: Unleash Your Creativity, Build Confidence, and Transform Your Skills! Does performing in front of others make you nervous, yet you dream of becoming a skilled improviser full of creativity and confidence? Searching for dynamic activities to energize participants of all skill levels? New to improv and need a welcoming guide to get started? If any of these resonate, The Complete Improv Playbook is your comprehensive guide to unlocking creativity and confidence with over 70 games and techniques for every skill level.

The New Comedy Bible is a step-by-step, no excuses manual for writing, performing, and launching your career as a stand-up comic. Written by Judy Carter, the author of The Comedy Bible (2001), which was called by The Washington Post and Forbes as a “Comedy Essential”. This new book, penned in classic Carter’s style - part career coach and part comedy dominatrix - has 100 percent new content.

This entertaining and sharply written guide - for both beginners breaking into comedy and professionals seeking to improve their sets and advance their careers - examines the work of great comedians such as Louis C. K., Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Izzard, Moms Mabley, Hannibal Buress, Sarah Silverman, Richard Pryor, and more as a means of illustrating the most important techniques of performing and writing stand-up.

Author Scott Dikkers will tell you how to write jokes. He’s a master joke writer, founder of the world’s most popular humor site TheOnion.com, number one New York Times best-selling humor author, professional public speaker, and successful cartoonist. In this definitive joke-writing handbook, he'll teach you comedy writing and how to write a joke with a simple comedy-writing and joke-writing formula you can use right now to write your own jokes.

They say you can’t teach stand-up comedy, but you can certainly give a lot of good advice. The best comedians in the business share bits of advice and full-fledged stories to impart the lessons they learned treading the boards, hitting the road, and of course, on occasion, bombing.

In this step-by-step guide, an actor and improvisational teacher brings his tested methods to the page to show how actors can take risks and gain spontaneity in all genres of scripted theater. Through 28 lessons - each of which includes warm-ups, points of concentration, and improvisation exercises - Improv for Actors provides insights into thinking and reacting with fluidity, exploring a character’s social status, using the voice and body as effective tools of storytelling, and more.

Improv performers look like creative geniuses, coming up with brilliant comedy on the spur of the moment. But they rely on some simple rules and techniques - ones which anyone can learn, and which can help us offstage to think creatively, collaborate with others and communicate with impact. Improvise! will show you how to handle whatever comes your way at work - from giving confident presentations and handling difficult conversations to coming up with great ideas and persuading others to make them happen.

While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).

If one George Carlin audio is funny, then two are funnier and three must be funniest, right? That's our thinking behind this new collection. t's a HighBridge library of laugh-out-loud, award-winning recordings featuring George himself performing many of his best bits.

In Finding Your Funny Muscle, Mike shows you how to “flex” your ideas into funny, original, and relatable humor that gets big laughs—and makes you memorable for the right reasons.

Public speaking can be terrifying. For David Nihill, the idea of standing in front of an audience was scarier than cliff jumping into a thorny pit of spiders and mothers-in-law. Without a parachute or advanced weaponry. Something had to change.

In what doesn't sound like the best plan ever, David decided to overcome his fears by pretending to be a comedian called "Irish Dave" for one full year, crashing as many comedy clubs, festivals, and shows as possible.