I am just over halfway through a week long online immersion with Jerry Corley.
I have seen his ads on social media for a while although the prospect of going all the way to California seemed daunting for a Muslim in the Trump Era.
Frustrated with not able to perform standup due to the lockdown I was intrigued by the opportunity tell jokes every night once again with some expert criticism behind it. Jerry’s bumph boasts of 30 years of comedy experience including writing for The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
I was hoping this course could stimulate me into writing a bit more and improve my existing stand up content.
This course was not inexpensive… But for my 500 ish dollars I got quite a lot of solid training. Every day there are 4 to 5 hours of lectures, writing, performance and feedback. Jerry talks about the psychology of comedy and elucidates comedy mechanics including incongruity, clichés and reversals and rule of 3 type stuff.
While you can learn about a lot of this stuff from books, what makes this course special is the intensive writing group writing sessions and Jerry’s critiques. I can’t think of a nicer and more approachable stand up comedy coach. I have been doing standup for 7 years and Jerry blew my mind with some excellent punching up of my existing material and suggestions of ongoing writing. He is extremely generous with his time and often overshoots by an hour. He invites us all to send material to him by e mail or even call him with any questions. Today he just did a critique of 10 of my newly written jokes, explaining in very lucid terms how I tend to overwrite the jokes. He is a very positive, encouraging and competent teacher.
I have been enjoying the Zoom format and other course delegates have been terrific in giving each other notes.
I have written about a hundred one liner jokes since I have started the course 4 days ago and I have been publishing them on Facebook and twitter and they seem fairly well received. I am looking forward to the final day tomorrow although will be sad to be leaving the group.
Hopefully after tomorrow, as well as making lots of new friends, I will continue my writing habits and keep publishing my new jokes on social media.
The Muslim and The Redneck 