Can You Teach Comedy? Inside Emerson College’s New Comedy Degree
Can you buy a comedy education? Emerson College will be offering a formalized degree program in Comedic Arts during their next academic year. Writer Luke O’Neil took a look at the comedy degree, and the students seeking it for New York Times magazine. Performing improv comedy will be a required course when the program officially launches next year. Other course offerings will include fundamentals and electives like Comedy Writing for Television, Great Screenwriters: Wilder, Allen, Kaufman, Comedy Writing for Late Night, and Why Did the Chicken? — Fundamentals of Comedic Storytelling. O’Neil questions why there is a discomfort with the idea of teaching comedy, while no one questions whether acting classes or music classes are meritorious. O’Neil himself sought a degree in creative writing from Emerson, another formalized degree in an artistic art, and Emerson has always been known for its concentrations in studying communications, writing, media and performing arts.
The major exists thanks to the prodding of a former writer for “Full House” and “Charles in Charge.” Professor Martie Cook says they are not trying to teach people how to be funny. The program instead appears to focus on teaching the craft and the business. For example, in Comedy Writing for Television, students will create spec scripts and critique each other’s work, and there are classes on film history- much like any other film history class, but focusing only on the one genre. Emerson has already been teaching many of the classes that will be a part of the major, and boasts many comedy graduates from its other curriculum choices. Norman Lear, Denis Leary, Mario Cantone, Jay Leno, Henry Winkler, Bill Burr, and Joe Mande in addition to a long list of staff writers for comedy shows and publications all got their education at Emerson, under other majors.
You can read O’Neil’s article in its entirety and learn more about Emerson’s BFA in Comedy in this week’s New York Times Magazine.
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