My 14 year old daughter is looking for some help and advice. She and a couple of her drama oriented friends want to perform a comedy sketch or two for the school. She has already had some success with an external small drama group who did the Python’s “Michaelangelo and the Pope – Last Supper” sketch but she thinks this may be just a bit edgy for her conservative all-girls school (“too jewish”).
So does anyone have any ideas? British sketches are generally preferred. As the audience is pretty young even hackneyed Python sketches are fresh to these new ears – however I am looking for something a bit more obscure. Fry and Laurie perhaps, the Two Ronnies (the “bad breath sketch” is a particular favourite of mine), or Victoria Wood (which may be more suitable given the all female actors and audience). All suggestions gratefully considered. Here’s an old Douglas Adams radio sketch with some potential.
How about a variation on this? They would have to update it as I don’t know if kids would get the Bowie reference, and they would probably want to change that ‘wanking’ line anyway, but adapting it to their own teachers and schoolmates would be valuable in itself, and surely funnier than learning someone else’s sketch by rote.
https://youtu.be/8X3BJIAgkM8
I always liked Victoria Wood’s sketch about the sixth former being interviewed for medical school.
“It’s a play by William Shakespeare. Of the Royal Shakespeare Company”.
Sorry, can’t do Youtube links from work but if a gorilla suit can be obtained then how about Gerald the Gorilla from Not The Nine O’clock News?
“Excuse me, I’d like to buy a gramophone”
How about the headmaster’s roll call
I have no idea why this popped into my mind but I can visualise this as a simple and very funny sketch performed by three girls of 14. It may also delight audience members over 60ish because I think it was a considered a classic piece of comedy in the olden days (pre 90s) ergo obscure.
Is that Will Self on the right?
The 4 Yorkshireman sketch is the one here. It’s got the lot. Funny accents, a punchline and the opportunity to improv it to local conditions.
What an interesting question!
I’m a great fan of the sophisticated humour of Mitchell and Webb, and the girls could do far worse than browse through a few of their sketches on the Tube. Some of them have to be done by two men, but one like this could just as easily be three women.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5muY64Oyp10
Why not look through a few Smack the Pony Sketches too? Like the Fast Show, they are short and sweet and perhaps don’t always have a punch line. But they are very funny. And written for female actors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6z9LrwidsE
Great sketch – but no punchline – maybe yr daughter and her pals could use that as a starting point and add a finish to it?
My immediate thought was the Pete & Dud One Legged Tarzan (One Leg too few). The change in sex adding an extra bit of humour.
More Pete and Dud – The Art Gallery
“You enjoying that sandwich?”
Here’s a good sketch for 3 (with two additional straight parts) from SNL. A chance to do some accents and have their first major showbiz bust-up over who gets the Kate McKinnon role;
Armstrong and Miller: any of the feckless fighter pilot sketches. The Year 9 and 10 kids at my school find them consistently hilarious. The gags involved are pretty timeless, broad-brush, and quite hard to deliver ruinously.
Another vote for Armstrong and Miller, who are very entertaining. Not that I’ve any idea what will make teenage girls laugh.
This amuses me anyway and there’s lots more on YT to browse through.
This could adapt quite nicely, with the added bonus that people might be expecting the better known Two Ronnies take on Mastermind:
Not bad, but surely the magesterial Two Ronnies Mastermind is obscure enough for a gaggle of 14 year olds – and works beautifully as a two-hander?
The one from “Goodness Gracious Me” about going out for an English could be spectacular and unexpected
Simple to stage
http://youtu.be/K2k1iRD2f-c
I was going to suggest Joyce Grenfell but most of the material is monologues and I suspect it would seem very old fashioned.