First of all, milk in coffee is not nearly as good as cream.  But despite the pleasant weather, I don’t want to get dressed yet and go to the store to buy cream, so milk will have to suffice, at least for the duration of this post.

This is the morning after my class’ first Archival Show performance.  I would have liked to have posted last night immediately after the performance, but I decided instead that having a drink might be a better way to celebrate a job well done than to sit at home alone at my computer and blog.  Any dedicated followers might disagree with my decision, but at the end of the day, I think I made the right choice.

Let me explain to you a bit more in detail what the deal is with this Archival Show.  Then, if you’re in Toronto, maybe it’ll motivate you to get out and see the performance.  Or, if you’re in Ottawa, you might decide to leave work early to do the same.

The Humber Comedy program is a two-year diploma college program.  At the beginning of the year, there were approximately 60 students in the first year of the program.  The first year students are divided up into three groups of about 20 students per group.  I belong to section 01, to help clarify.  As part of our second semester, each class has been assigned to a director, (three of the program’s faculty have been selected as directors.)  The teacher thus becomes the director and the class of students becomes the cast.  The cast of what, you ask?  The cast of our Archival Sketch Show.

Basically, we’ve combined a collection of sketches from SNL, SCTV, KITH and other acronyms representing great sketch comedy shows and put them together.  Each student is assigned a certain amount of roles in the sketches.  After two weeks of rehearsing, we, the students, perform the show in front of a real live audience at a real theatre in downtown Toronto, in this case, the Factory Theatre at Bathurst & Adelaide.

The idea is that we take what we’ve learned in our sketch classes, acting classes, physical comedy classes, history of comedy classes, improv classes… ok, basically each of our classes and use that knowledge to put on a professional sketch comedy show as a means of demonstrating the skills we have learned (and of justifying the program’s existence to the government?)  No, but seriously, the proceeds from the ticket money all go to a charitable cause, which is great as it allows for us to give back to the community and develop a sense of social justice, or something like that.

Last night was the culmination of all this learning and rehearsing as we took to the stage and performed the first of our two shows.  Tonight, we go again at 7:30 p.m.  The energy was high, the spirits were excited, friendly and encouraging and the atmosphere was really just spectacular.  And did I mention fun?  Did I forget to mention how much fun it is to put on a sketch comedy show?  Even though we’ve rehearsed the stuff so often, many of the jokes are no longer funny to us.  We’ve become immune, until the audience starts to laugh and laugh and laugh and it sparks again – oh right – this stuff is hilarious… now bite your tongue and don’t break character!

As I’ve mentioned, my section’s got another show lined up tonight.  For more information, you can check out: http://www.facebook.com/?sk=messages#!/event.php?eid=187385044615456&index=1.

Or just, you know, send me a txt or leave a message on the blog about a) how to get tickets or b) how apologetic you are about the fact you can’t come and how you intend to make it up to me with gifts or something similar.

Either way, I think it’s important for me to note how great of an experience it has been to put this show together and how much I’ve enjoyed working on it with the other great folks in my class.  Top notch people.  Top. Notch.

NOW.  Come get your laugh on TONIGHT at 7:30!!!

See you there!!