The Bachelor of Arts in Comedy Writing and Performance program is a collaborative partnership between the School of Theatre and Dance, the School of Film and Television, and The Second City. It builds on the School of Theatre and Dance’s long and successful tradition of teaching Improvisation and Sketch Comedy as part of its Acting sequence, and its successful seventeen-year partnership with The Second City in creating a semester-long immersion in the study and performance of comedy. The BA degree in Comedy Writing and Performance at Columbia is based on the concept of comedy-cross-training. 

We know that the most successful comedians in our industry–from Stephen Colbert to Robin Thede to Bowen Yang to Columbia’s own Aidy Bryant–have one thing in common: they are writer/director/performers who create work across mediums. Standup comedians need to know how to act and sell their material, comedy writers need to put up jokes in front of a live audience, and comedic improvisors need to be able to write characters for themselves to perform on video and film. This program offers multiple opportunities to actively create comedy and present comedy, and revise it based on feedback from audiences and experienced instructors. 

This program is built on the premise that a successful career in the world of comedy often requires the ability to shift between the roles of writer and performer and producer/director. Those who strongly self-identify as writers benefit from deep understanding of performance work. Comedic performers benefit from the ability to create pieces that showcase their specific persona and skills, and are better able to serve the needs of a piece when they understand the writing process. Additionally, even more than in traditional theatre, professional comedic work requires a writer/performer to serve as the producer for their own work. Throughout their careers they will be pitching projects for themselves, mounting work at festivals and fringe venues, as well as building presence on the internet through short videos and other comedic content. The likelihood that a professional comedian will also need to shift between the disciplines of live performance and television and film work make the interdisciplinary aspects of this degree especially important. 

As a result of successfully completing program requirements, students should be able to:

• collaborate creatively within a broadly diverse ensemble of writer/performers;
• generate original comedic material using a variety of methods;
• conduct and apply research into historic comic styles and archetypes;
• produce comic material across a variety of media and for diverse audiences;
• revise work based on analysis of comic texts and collaborative feedback;
• execute clear, thoughtful, and effective comic choices in performance;
• identify and use voice/persona in comic writing and performance; and
• use professional and ethical practices in the pursuit of a career in comedy.