Studying at Second City

So you should know by now that I take classes at The Second City Training Center. To be specific, I'm in the writing program, not improv. Having taken improv and writing classes at The Second City, there are definite differences between the two. While I'm going to discuss them, I'm going to tell you how much you might not expect from The Second City.

First off, The Second City may be a fun thing to do on a Friday night, but the writing classes are dead serious. You have to write a sketch every single week, bring it in and it is read for the class. You are critiqued on the sketch, given suggestions on how to improve it, some of which might change from class to class. At times what you think is the perfect sketch has so many holes that you might end up hating the final product.

And this isn't something to be taken lightly. You go through six writing levels, and you learn how to write a sketch in each one. The first level doesn't involve actually writing sketches until the end, but by the end of Writing 5, you're holding auditions for a show. In between you learn about sketch formats, parodies, clash of context, center-and-eccentric, satire, clothesline, blackouts, and jokes.

The thing about the writing course is that it's a bit more competitive in some way. When I did improv, a lot of it was basically the classmates doing something because it was fun, and that's not a bad thing, I had fun doing improv, too. But in order to get into the fifth writing level, you have to write a sketch and submit it. It has to follow detailed guidelines--is it written in the correct format, is it stageable, and are the characters human? Trust me, it's not that easy. And even worse, it's a pass/fail assignment and they don't even tell you why if you failed.

I did one script the first time I got into the fifth writing level, and I got rejected. I had to go through the same fourth level writing class unsure if I was going to get into Writing 5. Well, I did and as you might know, I have a show coming up in October. I'm helping with the marketing of the class.

If you want to get into the Writing program at The Second City Training Center, go ahead, but be warned, it is not easy. Good luck (you're gonna need it).