Comedy Club 4 Kids - Workshops

Now run by Isabelle, with other assorted DBS-checked professionals – James And Melissa having both retired to nice country lives – the workshops still aim to produce quality stand-up comedy performed by kids. All our forthcoming session dates are listed under Events: Workshops.

The classes involve lots of practical tips – like how to use the microphone and how to stand onstage – but also games and tasks to help participants come up with material and feel comfortable onstage. Wherever possible, we run the workshops in the same auditorium where we hold the shows, so the kids get used to performing on that stage; they will get up and do comedy in front of each other, but not an audience of paying public until they are invited to be part of the show.

The kids do a mix of solo work, sketches and improv games, similar to what you would see on ‘Mock the Week’, ‘Set List’ and ‘Whose Line Is It Anyway’. Each workshop is different; we are building up the attendees’ skills with every class and do different activities each time, though for the regular sessions we always start with them doing their new material. We usually have parents coming back at the end of the session to watch the games in the last 10-15 minutes, so as the kids’ families can see some of what they have been up to.

We run a regular fortnightly in-person class in London, where attendees pay in cash or by card. We also do fortnightly workshops on Zoom, which can be easier for some to get to, particularly internaional students. Where we can, we put kids from our Comedy Academy on at our shows, giving them a taste of performing and children in the audience a chance to be inspired themselves. The kids don’t have to come to the shows, but it’s a good idea (and not just for the ticket sales); watching as much live comedy as possible is a really good way of learning what works and what doesn’t.

Outside of these regular sessions, we also do one-off workshops: we have been commissioned by theatres and arts centres, community groups, schools, music festivals and by those organising kids’ birthday parties. We have even done private tutoring for kids, ahead of a big performance.

Attendees are generally aged 7-15. As with the age guideline of 6+ for the shows, this is not set in stone; some younger kids can be more mature than older ones. It’s mostly a question of whether they will be happy to spend a couple of hours messing around for the reward of the laughter of strangers.