Andrew Clark, the director of Humber College’s Comedy Writing and Performance program. (Andrew Clark/Humber College)
Harmanjeet Singh Gurm
Humber College will bring smiles and laughter with a new humor writing program this fall.
The School of Creative and Performing Arts is set to introduce a new online writing course, which will help students to sharpen their comedy writing.
“Humour writing is a graduate certificate program in which students will be provided with the opportunity to develop comedic writing skills under the supervision of mentors,” said Andrew Clark, the program director of the Comedy Writing and Performance course.
Clark said Humber is a leader in providing opportunities to students to succeed in comedy writing, The school also offers a two-year diploma in comedy writing and performance.
“We have a strong tradition of comedy writing and it is kind of capitalizing on it, we thought doing a graduate certificate will be a great step ahead,” he said.
Clark said students will work individually with a mentor to develop their writing in particular area of interest and there will be weekly tutorials, where they will have lessons on different aspects of writing and editing.
“We are still in the process of hiring faculty but it will range from local to international writers along with famous names such as Mike Sacks, who is a well-known writer, humourist and works for the editorial staff of Vanity Fair magazine,” he said.
“The program will provide a large variety of courses which will teach about self-editing, comedic formats, how to pitch for comedy, storytelling and many more important aspects of comedy writing, and will help students to develop the skills and the confidence they need in a real-life market,” he said.
Andrew Scott, the Associate Dean of the School of Creative and Performing Arts, said they wanted to have a program which could be accessible to people all around the world.
“We often notice that most of the students in online programs are already on jobs or are working professionals, who pursue these courses for an investment to their professional development,” he said.
“Our focus was to find and form a community of people in an online environment, where they can maintain their day jobs along with the studies, and for that, they don’t need to be in Toronto or Canada, they can be from anywhere in the world,” Scott said.
Scott said program will be geared toward helping the students to create a portfolio of work, which will make them ready for professional industry and market.