Comedy Study Group > Comedy School > Comedy Paycheck

It starts as a comedy study group.

The idea is simple: we build a system in which everyone has a stake in everyone else’s success. We learn to make people laugh the way you would learn any other skill—by studying it, practicing it, testing it in front of an audience, and getting better.

The goal isn’t to game the entertainment industry. It’s to become genuinely good at entertaining people.

Over time, the group can develop into a working comedy organization: writers, performers, directors, producers, and audiences all participating in a system where success is shared rather than purely competitive. Eventually, the work should be good enough that people are willing to pay for it—and the people making it should be paid for doing it.

There is something missing from much of modern comedy: a strong, organized community of people whose shared objective is simply to make people laugh.

Historically, entertainers have often depended on powerful networks, gatekeepers, patrons, studios, clubs, or informal communities to develop their careers. We’re interested in taking the useful part of that idea—the community and mutual investment—without taking the coercion, exploitation, or secrecy that can accompany those systems.

So we do it openly, scientifically, and morally.

The audience consents to participate. The entertainers consent to participate. We test ideas, see what actually makes people laugh, learn from the results, and improve.

The fundamental principle is: learn to be funny.

Don’t optimize for politics. Don’t optimize for controversy. Don’t optimize for saying what you’re supposed to say. Don’t assume an audience owes you applause.

Make something funny.

Then let the audience decide whether it was funny by laughing—and eventually, by choosing to pay to see more of it.

The ambition is to create a system that develops comedians by actually teaching them the craft, rather than teaching them how to navigate the machinery surrounding the craft.