CANCELLED Kevin McDonald Sketch Workshop: Squeezing Comedy from Improv

Join Sacramento Comedy Spot for sketch workshops presented by Kevin McDonald of Kids in the Hall!

Kevin will talk about writing sketches through improv, with small groups of students improvising various scenes. When each scene is over, Kevin and the students will talk about how to make a sketch from what they just witnessed: how to build up the comedy, how to build on the characters, and how to create a story for this new sketch. Scenes are then performed again, as a more prepared comedy sketch. At the end of the class, there will be a big group improv scene with everyone participating, which will be the basis for a new, epic comedy sketch.

Interested in more? Kevin is also offering a second workshop, One Line Premise, on Sunday, April 23!

Kevin McDonald has written for The Kids in the Hall, The Martin Short Show, and Saturday Night Live. He founded The Kids in the Hall with his friend Dave Foley. They met in Toronto at the Second City Training Center, and the two wrote and performed in sketches together more than any other pair in the group. In the troupe’s TV show and stage shows, he portrays several favorite recurring characters, such as the King of Empty Promises, Sir Simon Milligan, and Jerry Sizzler. Still, it’s a frequent running gag that McDonald is the least popular member and always struggling not to get kicked out.

Since The Kids in the Hall’s end in 1994, he’s played many roles in movies like Boy Meets Girl, Agent Pleakley in the Lilo & Stitch series, and Harry Potter in Epic Movie. On TV, he has appeared on The Martin Short Show, Ellen (as a radio personality), That ’70s Show (as a confused young cleric, Pastor Dave), Seinfeld, Friends, NewsRadio (on which Foley starred), MADtv, Arrested Development, and Corner Gas. McDonald has also done voice work for various animated series, including Invader Zim (in which he did the voice for Almighty Tallest Purple), The Angry Beavers, Catscratch (in which he voiced Waffle), and Clerks: The Animated Series. He also played an imaginary friend named Ivan in the Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends episode, Sight For Sore Eyes, and appeared in the music video for “Roses” by Outkast.

In 2006, McDonald hosted a CBC Television special, featuring several of Canada’s best-known sketch comedy troupes. “Sketch with Kevin McDonald” won a Canadian Comedy Award (Best-Taped Live Performance – The Minnesota Wrecking Crew), with The Imponderables nominated for the same award. He was recently in Montréal as a part of the Just for Laughs Festival with the reunion of The Kids in the Hall, and also with his show “Hammy and the Kids” with Craig Northey, based on his two dysfunctional families, his father (“Hammy”) and The Kids in the Hall.