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Learning to laugh means learning about life

After 11 years, still running the comedy asylum

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Photos by Charlie Shoemaker⁄The Gazette Harry Bagdasian, director of the comedy club at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School, works with students during a Thursday rehearsal for ‘‘Slaw And Disorder: Comic Intent,” which will be held April 28 and 29. Click here to enlarge this photo (Below) Sixth-graders James Mott (left), 11, and James Syverson, 12 go over a scene.

Now, picture it inside the gymnasium at Col. E. Brooke Lee Middle School and you can imagine what Harry Bagdasian’s afternoon was like during Thursday’s Comedy Club rehearsal.

Students skittered across the stage, jumping like squirrels in and out of scenes, while others talked with friends in the bleachers.

Standing inches from the front of the stage, Bagdasian directed some of his 21 young actors like the harried conductor of an orchestra full of cats.

‘‘What you see,” said Robbie McEwan, Harry’s wife, ‘‘is middle school chaos.”

Amid the cacophony and confusion, Bagdasian shouted directions to the technical crew as he came up with ideas and worked with his sixth-, seventh- and eighth-grade cast so each joke in the 21-sketch show gets a laugh.

‘‘It’s hard sometimes to keep them focused,” said Bagdasian, the club’s director. ‘‘Some days I have to use a little more yelling.”

And who can blame him? With a little more than a week before the opening night of the club’s show ‘‘Slaw and Disorder: Comic Intent,” scheduled Friday and Saturday, the script was a work in progress and it was clear some students hadn’t memorized their lines.

‘‘Since it’s an original show, it all comes together late,” he said. ‘‘Everything’s subject to change. But that’s always the challenge of doing something new.”

A freelance writer and director, Bagdasian has directed the school’s comedy club for 11 years and has been involved with comedy and theater since the early 1970s.

So, the process — writing and directing — isn’t new. The material is.

A product of seven months of script development and rehearsal, including writing, improvisation and comedy acting workshops, this year’s show features a range of sketches inspired or written by students in the club.

From school-based satires such as ‘‘Teacher Types” and ‘‘School Board Meeting” to parodies of popular television shows like ‘‘Lost” and ‘‘America’s Next Top Model,” the show looks at life from a middle school student’s perspective with an approach some would consider a bit more sophisticated.

‘‘The potty humor is definitely there,” said co-director Beck Krefting, a University of Maryland graduate student who worked with the students on improv and comedy acting. ‘‘What you have to do is unteach them that. Scatology is their only way of getting laughs until they learn the more nuanced comedy.”

And they’re not afraid to take on the acting and comedic challenges from which older, more experienced performers shy away.

‘‘The great thing about working with middle school students is most of them have never done anything like this before, so everything is fresh,” Bagdasian said. ‘‘They don’t have to be frightened.”

Because students and adults will be in the audience, Bagdasian, who contributed six sketches along with Comedy Club co-founder Lisa Itte and professional writer Mark Murray, said one of the challenges is finding a balance between a sixth-grader’s sense of humor and that of mom and dad.

‘‘Every year I’ll write a sketch and they say it’s not funny, and I say, ‘It’s for the parents,’ ” he said. ‘‘Every year they’ll write a sketch and I don’t think it’s funny, but I’ll put it in anyway because students think it’s funny.”

Usually, he said, students will laugh at role reversals, like the ‘‘America’s Next Top Models” sketch featuring boys instead of girls, or sketches that skewer school life — ‘‘any kind of revolt against authority,” Bagdasian said.

‘‘Kids get a kick out of reading through [the script], and if they can see the humor in the politics of a Board of Education meeting, they’re capable of so much more,” Krefting said.

Bagdasian, who lives in the Kemp Mill neighborhood near the school and has two daughters, Kate and Jennie, who attended the school, started the club in 1995 after the school’s principal at the time asked him and Itte to put together some type of drama club.

‘‘She knew my theater background,” said Bagdasian, who was founder and artistic director of Washington, D.C.,’s New Playwrights’ Theatre. He has directed and written for the U.S. Army Military District of Washington ‘‘Spirit of America” and has penned several plays.

‘‘Lisa and I decided ... we’d do something original like our own version of ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch comedy.”

Bagdasian had written comedy before, but not for students, and Itte had never written comedy.

‘‘But that didn’t stop us,” he said. ‘‘Aerodynamically, a bumblebee shouldn’t be able to fly, but no one told them, so they fly. That’s what’s behind us doing this and influencing students to just do it.”

What began as a low-budget production with a few stools and no microphones has evolved into a full-scale show with a set designed by the school’s art students, lights coordinated by the club’s technical staff of 10, and sound with microphones and a soundboard provided by the school’s PTSA.

This year, the club even offers a spaghetti dinner and show package for Saturday night’s production.

And while students have come and gone over the years, a lot of the names are the same, as youngsters go to the show, see their brothers and sisters perform and decide the club is something worth joining.

‘‘One of the most major changes is now more than half of the show is written by students,” Bagdasian said. ‘‘Having that is the best part of the show ... because it’s their achievement and gives them a chance to be bumblebees.”

One of those bumblebees who got started watching her sister take part in the club is sixth-grader Chelsea Vanderweele.

‘‘I just really love making people laugh,” said the 11-year-old. ‘‘Some say, ‘I’m afraid to do this because people will laugh at me,’ but that’s the whole point of Comedy Club.”

A veteran writer and actor in the club, eighth-grader Joshua Rosen said the Comedy Club ‘‘has inspired me to aspire to be an actor. There’s nothing cooler than being backstage and saying, ‘Wow, we’re about to put on a really funny show.’”

While ‘‘you can walk into any room [in school] and find comedy,” you won’t always find a comedian, Rosen said.

‘‘I know this kid on the [audio-visual] crew who tried to do comedy, but said, ‘This isn’t my thing.’ Then there are kids who aren’t in Comedy Club but should be and some who have quit Comedy Club who I think should have stayed.”

Fortunately, the club has attracted some great comedians over the years, McEwan said. But, she added, they get a lot more out of it than just a few after-school laughs.

‘‘For me, the value of Comedy Club comes from my understanding of the value of art, which comes from process, not the product,” she said. ‘‘They’re taking a creative idea and understanding what the essence is. A lot of this is a way for kids to deal with issues in their lives and to take the sting out of it.”