This week Roger Smith lead a very interesting and activity based comedy workshop. StageOne had a chance to revisit the Aladdin Pantomime characters with a variety of jokes and poems at the expense of the characters from the pantomime. There was also a cleverly designed "Just a Minute" quiz loosely based mainly on the Aladdin Pantomime and some of the jokes from it.

This week we will have another brilliant comedy workshop with Roger. Roger had brought with him a variety of comedy books and biographical books including Tommy Cooper and Spike Milligan. Roger invited us to debate what types of comedy particular comedians focused on. Examples included slap-stick, paradying, innuendos.

Following Roger, Adam led his first Shakespeare work shop and intorduced us all to Othello and talked abit about the play and the plot, and characters. The plot essentially involves a charcter called Iago trying set up Othello because he go passed over for promotion. We read through the first two scenes and immediatley got a feel for what Iago was up to. We will continue to look at the play abit further.

This weeks comedy workshop looked at contemporary comedy and examined examples found in televison such as Family Guy, Futurama, Coming Of Age and Lunch Monkeys. Examples in radio included Dead Ringers, I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, and others. We also had a look at some examples of stand up comedy including established names such as Catherine Tate, Michael Mcintyre, Peter Kay and Alan Carr.

The group discussed what Stage One could learn from such examples. One important point raised included not using foul language in a comedy routine was many comedians seem to. Other points were getting audiences to participate in the sketch, respecting the audience, picking the himourous material with care, using the radiculous and parodying that audiences will easy relate to such as the news, antics and phrases by politicians past and present.

The group finished the workshop with a version of "Just A Minute". With some repetition, hesitation and deviation the group talked about particular topics including what they know about Fred, a made up name and person by the way, how to make a stew, my favourite comedian, their first day st school, and why they had to visit the physiatrist, and others.

It was fun for all from start to finish with added sound from Adam's computer and noisy items brought specially.

Amazingly three of the group were able to talk without being challenged for a full 50 seconds topped by one member achieving a full minute. WOW!

This week is another lon awaited comedy workshop with Roger Smith and Adam Grannell. We will be exploring what comedy is and taking a lokk at some of the contempory comedy outthere today both on TV and radio, and how we can apply some of the knowledge into out drama on stage. But thats not all!

We will also have another exciting workshop with Ian and exploring singing on stage and looking back at some of the singing skills used in the Alice In Wonderland Production.