10.45am-3.45pm @ Theatre Deli, Isle of Dogs, London Transform your stand-up crowd work. This is a unique opportunity to learn from one of the best stand-ups at working an audience in the business and to receive direction and tips from one of the country’s top comedy coaches and live comedy directors. This live, intensive session is designed for new or established comedians who want to connect with their audience and elevate their crowd work, to enhance their gigs as well as creating clippable stand-up content for social media. This is a highly practical session. Playful and inspiring practical exercises will get you exploring aspects of audience interaction, meaning there will be lots of opportunities to get up onto the microphone in front of the group to practice your crowd work. • In the session you’ll receive feedback and a whole host of tips from Geoff Whiting, who will share experiences from his decades of doing crowd work with literally thousands of audiences. • And you’ll also receive tips and strategies from leading stand-up coach and director Chris Head. The session will sharpen your skills, build your confidence and equip you with new crowd work techniques and strategies. You'll learn about: • Reading the Room: Techniques for assessing who to pick to talk to. • Engaging the Audience: Creating spontaneous interactions, genuine connections and making every show unique. • Persona games: Identify comic approaches that you take with audience members that work with your persona. • Handling Hecklers: Strategies for handling heckling and defusing tense situations. • Building Confidence: Feel more comfortable and capable when interacting with audience members. About the session leaders Chris Head: A respected coach, director and author in the UK comedy scene, Chris has a wealth of knowledge and a proven ability in teaching comedians how to develop their material and performance. Geoff Whiting: Geoff has a host of practical and inspiring insight into how to engage and interact with audiences. A seasoned comedian with years of experience in stand-up and compering, Geoff is known for his mastery of crowd work and has performed in every major club and festival in the country and all over the world, honing his crowd work skills to perfection. Don't miss out on this chance to enhance your crowd work skills and become a more confident and engaging comedian.

Stand-up Comedians Writing Group: Material Generation Sessions (Live on Zoom) 5 x 2 hour sessions on Zoom 7pm-9pm UK time/ 8pm-10pm European time 11am-1pm Pacific time (PDT) 2pm-4pm Eastern time (EDT) £135 (repeat fee £125) DEVELOP NEW STAND-UP MATERIAL AND PUNCH UP YOUR EXISTING STUFF! Learn more about your persona, develop your performance and get loads of new comedy tools and perspectives in my online stand-up group for gigging acts. You'll be part of a group with a great bunch of stand-ups working with me, UK comedy director and author of "A Director's Guide to the Art of Stand-up", talking comedy and getting inspiration. I've run it with comics from all over the world and IT WORKS. Everyone ends up with new stuff and loads of ideas. For stand-ups who are already gigging (or are returning to gigging after a break), these sessions will inspire you to write new material, give you comedy tools you will use again and again, as well as punch up your existing material. This is for you if: - You want new material! - You want stand-up writing techniques and inspiration. - You want to have a more focused and effective writing routine or you have got out of the habit of writing. - You want to get more out of your existing material or refresh material that isn’t working as well as it once did. - You want a structured format that will provide tools, inspiration and accountability. - You want to hang out online with other comics with an experienced director and coach who structures the sessions and holds the space. What you'll get out of joining the group: - Find out all the techniques that stand-ups use in their writing that you’re not currently using! We do this by analysing stand-up clips of your choosing to uncover techniques you can use (and you’ll be surprised how looking at these clips with fresh eyes and an analytical lens will uncover techniques you haven’t consciously put a name to). - Discover how to get more out of your existing material.There are always places you can take material that you haven’t thought of – and often this is going into the playful hypothetical space that all top stand-ups explore - and also ways to punch up what you have to make it land more strongly. - Gain inspiration for thinking about new topics for your stand-up and familiar topics in new ways.There will be inspiring online brainstorming in the session and creative exercises to play with that will open up ideas.

15th Sept - 13th October 2026 (5 x Tues nights) 7pm-9pm UK time, 8pm-10pm European time, 11am-1pm Pacific time (PDT), 2pm-4pm Eastern time (EDT) Across 5 weeks, be taken through the process of writing an artfully structured and plotted comedy script. A writer said of the course: "This course structures me and my script". You will see the structure in action in the first episode of Daddy Issues (BBC comedy written by my former student Danielle Ward.) You will see how the action is written in the script and also how it plays out on screen at each of the key story beats. We will do the same analysis with Black Ops and Ghosts, and other shows will provide examples of these story beats including Catastrophe and Hacks. WEEK 1 of the course: SET-UP (ACT 1) ACT 1 will be setting everything up for that episode. It will open with the SET-UP that establishes the world and the characters. Homework: Write the set-up WEEK 2 of the course: TURNING POINT (ACT 1) At the end of Act 1 you reach a TURNING POINT for your protagonist. So something changes for your main character, it's the moment that sends your characters down a new path or raises the stakes on the challenge that has been introduced. Homework: Write to the turning point at the end of act 1 Week 3 of the course: MIDPOINT (ACT 2) Act 2 picks up the story, then around half-way through the script, you hit the MIDPOINT. It's not just the middle of the script, it has a specific job to do. It can be the moment of no return, or at least when things suddenly get more challenging and options close down for your protagonist. It can also be a revelation where the audience find out something significant. Homework: Write to the midpoint of act 2 Week 4 of the course: CRUNCH POINT (ACT 2) At the END ACT 2 you hit a CRUNCH POINT for your protagonist. This is the worst point. You can look at the script making things worse for your protagonist across the three beats of turning point, mid point and crunch point. Homework: Write to the crunch point of act 2 Week 5 of the course: TWIST (ACT 3) As you go into act 3 an element of the narrative reaches a conclusion but you're likely to keep a storyline open to take us into the series. The TWIST at the end of the episode gives a surprise finish, which is either simply a comic beat to end on, or potentially sets up the narrative to come. Homework: Write to the end of the script, the twist of act 3 (This final homework will be reviewed online a week after the final session)