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How to stage your own sketch show

You may be able to rehearse in someone's house. We used the basement room in a pub, and a university cafeteria. To begin with you just need somewhere where the actors can sit with the scripts in their hands. Later on, you will need space to work on the stage directions.
Set up a rehearsal schedule. I'd suggest once a week, moving to a more intensive schedule as the live date gets closer. If you have a director, they should be able to provide guidance on this.


You may also want to arrange for the show to be recorded. If so, make arrangements with a sound recorder.

Step 4: Sketch selections, auditions and initial rehearsals

You need to decide what sketches to include. If several writers are involved, this will probably be a case of each writer selecting an equal amount of their favourite sketches. If disputes arise over the suitability of a sketch, you could take guidance from your director.
You then need to decide which actors to use for each sketch. If you know the actors from previous shows, then you may have an idea of roles that they would be good at. However, it may be worth getting several to read for a role and then make a decision. I would suggest trying to split the workload fairly evenly, particularly if the actors are devoting their time free of charge. This may also help to prevent grumbles over one actor getting all the good roles.
Having chosen your sketches and which actors are going to be in them, you can start rehearsing the sketches. Initially, this will involve reading from the scripts. To save time, you may want to split the group into two so that you can rehearse two sketches at the same time, assuming that you have adequate space to facilitate this.

Step 5: Marketing, promotion, and ticketing

Your aims here should be to:
recoup as much of your costs as possible (and maybe make a small profit)
ensure a decent sized audience (ideally you want to be able to say that your sketches were performed before a sell out audience!)
attract some media/sketch industry contacts. A good review from a local magazine or paper can be very beneficial, and getting sketch producers or directors, etc, would constitute a real coup.

Some of the marketing tactics that you can employ include:
Produce cheap flyers and put them in local pubs, theatres, universities, etc.
Word of mouth / personal selling. Go out and tell people about the show. If all the writers, the director, and the actors tell their friends and family then this will go a long way towards selling your


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