What is Sketch Comedy?
I’m guessing that the vast majority of my blog audience already knows what a sketch is. But for the minority…
Have you seen “Saturday Night Live”, “Mad TV”, or “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”? If so, you’ve seen a lot of sketches, because those are examples of sketch comedy shows.
The typical sketch is a self-contained short comedic scripted scene (a prewritten story, acted out), 3-5 minutes long.
That it is short contrasts with comedic plays or situation comedy tv shows.
That it is scripted contrasts with improvisational comedy.
That it is acted out contrasts with stand-up comedy.
That it is comedic contrasts with crap (bad sketch comedy) and drama.
A more specific definition might talk about how this comedic story will have some sort of conflict between the characters, and the story will contain either a world with a twist, or characters with a twisted view. Much comedy will come from the surprise that follows the logic of the comedic world or comedic characters, contrasting with the logic or norms of the real world. In the end, the conflict is resolved, and there are more laughs.
There are many exceptions to this definition (blackouts, monologues, multipart sketches, callbacks, sketch tableaus, etc.), but don’t worry too much about it. One of the lessons in any discipline is that you follow the rules until you’re good enough to know when to break them.
I’m not going to get into what makes for good sketch comedy here. Like all art and entertainment, it is highly subjective. On this site, though, I am coming from a writing perspective, so anything that does not depend on good writing, even if funny, might get overlooked.
Sketches, Skits, Scenes…
Do I care what you call it? Not really. Insiders say “sketches” (and sometimes “scenes”) 99.99% of the time. Yes, I took an exhaustive poll of 5,000 sketch comedians and found only 5 didn’t. If sktech comedians said “skits”, I’d say “skits”. But they don’t, so I don’t. People who say “skits” when referring to sketch comedy just aren’t paying attention to the language of the community, but it doesn’t make my sketches any worse.