Sketch comedy

Sketch comedy comprises a series of short comedy scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long. Such sketches are performed by a group of comic actors or comedians, either on stage or through an audio and/or visual medium such as radio and television. Often sketches are first improvised by the actors and written down based on the outcome of these improv sessions; however, such improvisation is not necessarily involved in sketch comedy.

An individual comedy sketch is a brief scene or vignette of the type formerly used in vaudeville, and now used widely in comedy and variety shows, talk shows and some children's television series (such as Sesame Street).

Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their product from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character or situation.

History

Sketch comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where a large number of brief, but humorous, acts were strung together to form a larger programme.

Key & Peele

Key & Peele is an American sketch comedy television series created by Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele for Comedy Central. Both Key and Peele previously worked on MADtv.

Each episode of the show consists mainly of several pre-taped sketches starring the two actors. The sketches cover a variety of societal topics, often with a focus on American popular culture, ethnic stereotypes, and race relations.Key & Peele premiered on January 31, 2012 and ended on September 9, 2015, with a total of 53 episodes, over the course of five seasons. A special entitled "Key & Peele's Super Bowl Special" aired on January 30, 2015.

Key & Peele won a Peabody Award and has been nominated for various other awards, including Writers Guild Award,NAACP Image Award and several Primetime Emmy Awards.

Format

An episode usually consists of a cold opening, with a short sketch. After the intro plays, the two hosts introduce themselves to a studio audience and explain a possible situation, with the following sketch having a similar situation. The show then follows this pattern, with about 7 sketches, each varying in time. Not all the segments are introduced by a studio segment.

Comedy

In a modern sense, comedy (from the Greek: κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or to amuse by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film and stand-up comedy. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece. In the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a dramatic performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a "Society of Youth" and a "Society of the Old". A revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. In this struggle, the youth is understood to be constrained by his lack of social authority, and is left with little choice but to take recourse in ruses which engender very dramatic irony which provokes laughter.

Sketch

Sketch may refer to:

Drawing

Software

Literature and entertainment

People and characters