Make It, Play It - Writing Clown Comedy With Bad Props

This exercise takes you from nothing to having some promising ideas for new comedy routines involving props/ costumes 🤡

Cheat Sheet

1. Write a list of 10+ topics/ themes (1 min)

2. Pick one topic and brainstorm until you’ve created 10+ specific items that fit within that topic (2 min)

3. Pick an item and list properties of it (1 min)

   1. Common knowledge

   2. What’s unusual about it

   3. What’s interesting

4. Brainstorm 10+ ways of making a budget prop/ costume of that item (5 mins)

   1. The way a child might make it

   2. Things around the home/ where you are now that you could use

   3. Objects that share a key property with this item (from previous step)

   4. How would you make it given different budgets

5. Pick one of these props/ costume ideas and brainstorm comedic games/ bits (5 mins)

   1. Problems that arise because of how it’s made

   2. Consequences and implications of having that prop, how it works and what it’s made of

   3. Games/ interactions with the audience/ performer

6. Repeat or dive deeper

   1. Repeat or go back in the process to any point if you want to explore more or start again

   2. Dive into any promising ideas that came up

Intro

Welcome to the wonderful world of props and costumes! These can turn a comedy set into a visual and playful masterpiece. Enhancing characters and making memorable and hilarious moments.

This exercise helps you discover cheap and quick ways of making fun props/ costumes and finding fun games/ bits and comedic routines to go with them. You can do this exercise with no previous ideas or bring in some thoughts/ themes or starting points.

Running through the exercise in full should take you about 15 minutes, you can then repeat the whole thing or certain bits to keep discovering more fun!

No prior knowledge or experience is needed to get started, although you may find the additional resources linked to on this page helpful, especially if you’re not familiar with developing comedic games.

The Exercise

1. Generate Topics/ Themes

1. Set a timer for 1 minute (or be free if you’re a crazy cat)

2. Write down at least 10 different topics/ themes that you may want to generate ideas for

See more advice at Listing Themes/ Topics & Items For Writing Comedy

2. Brainstorm Items For Topic

1. Pick a topic/ theme from the previous step

2. Set a timer for 2 minutes

3. Write down at least 10 specific items inside this category

The goal here is to get a range of different ideas in the category that we could try and create fun props/ costumes for. So think about physical things e.g. objects, creatures, costumes, characters etc.

It is absolutely possible to create fun props and costumes for non physical things. e.g Creating a prop that symbolises love or another concept. So don’t just limit yourself, however you may find these harder, so having a mix of physical things and non physical can be useful

See more advice at Listing Themes/ Topics & Items For Writing Comedy

3. List Properties of an Item

1. Pick an item from the previous step

2. Set a timer for 1 minute

3. List out 10+ things about that item

   1. Common knowledge

   2. Unusual characteristics

   3. What’s interesting about it

   4. What’s funny about it

This will help us see how we can use other unrelated objects when we make our props/ costumes. e.g. How a hairbrush can be used as a microphone because they both have a handle.

See more advice at Making Props & Costumes for Clown and Character Comedy

4. How Do You Make A Prop/ Costume For That Item

1. Take the same item from the previous step

2. Set a timer for 5 minutes

3. Brainstorm ways of making that item as a prop/ costume. Think about:

   1. The way a child might make it

   2. Things around the home/ where you are now that you could use

   3. Objects that share a key property with your sub item (from previous step)

   4. How would you make it on different budgets e.g. with £1,000 / £100 / £10 / £0

See more advice at Making Props & Costumes for Clown and Character Comedy

Note that there’s no set amount of things to brainstorm here, just go for 5 minutes, exploring whatever feels most useful

5. What Comedic Games Can You Play

1. Pick one of the prop/ costume ideas from the previous step

2. Set a timer for 5 minutes

3. Brainstorm comedic games, beats and bits around this prop/ costume. Think about:

   Problems that arise because of how it’s made

   If you have made yourself a tall hat, it’s likely to be difficult to balance on your head. This could be a great problem to have, perhaps you might make it taller so it becomes really hard, or the hat can become taller or you add more to it throughout the bit. This kind of discovered problem can be a gift and one of the key funny things about the bit.

   Consequences and implications of having that prop, how it works and what it’s made of

   Let’s say you’ve decided to make a new romantic partner out of a bunch of fruit that you stuck together and you introduce this fruit person to the audience as your new partner. Fruit is meant to be eaten. So what is the implication of this partner made of fruit? You start eating them. Maybe you keep accidentally eating bits of them and getting upset that they’re withering away. Or you get carried away with how delicious they are and then are devastated that you’ve eaten all of them.

   Games/ interactions with the audience/ performer

   If you’ve put a roll of toilet paper on your head to pretend to be long hair, how can you engage with the audience now? You can get them to hold the end and try and “climb” up your hair “Rapunzel style”. What’s the consequence of this? Toilet paper is weak, it’s likely to break. What happens when it breaks? In this fantasy of the audience member climbing up your hair, if the hair breaks as they’re “climbing” they would fall to their death. See the full example below for more on this

   Related items from brainstorming around the theme and how they could weave into this

See more advice at Brainstorming Comedic Games

Other useful resources:

• Game

• Beat (In Relation to Game)

• Bit

6. Repeat or Dive Deeper

If you want to discover something new go back and repeat any of the previous steps. e.g. if you like the theme, but not the item you chose, go back to step 2 or 3. Especially if you felt you did not have enough time to get all your ideas out during one of the steps.

If you have some fun ideas and want to develop them further, you can take these and look at the following resources:

• Heightening / Escalation

• Desire & Disaster - Goals, Stakes and Problems

• Develop an existing idea

• Written comedy development checklist

And finally here’s some additional questions and prompts you can ask yourself:

• If your character has this prop/ costume, what else do they have?

• What does this prop/ costume say about your character?

• What related elements can you weave in?

  • Things related to the original theme?

  • If you like this idea, you can stick on this theme and go again to brainstorm related ideas that could for multiple related bits for a show

Real World Example

This example comes from the amazing Luke Rollason. I saw a WIP of his show at Edinburgh 2023 and thinking about how he might have devised it led me to coming up with this exercise. It’s probably not how he wrote it, but it was fun to think about.

1. Write a list of 10+ topics/ themes (1 min)

   1. Fairy Tales

2. Pick one topic and brainstorm until you’ve created 10+ specific items that fit within that topic (2 min)

   1. Fairy Tales

      1. Rapunzel

3. Pick an item and list properties of it. (1 min)

   1. Rapunzel

      1. Long hair

      2. Tower

      3. Climbing up the hair

      4. Lonely

      5. Prince Charming

4. Brainstorm 10+ ways of making a budget prop/ costume of that item (5 mins)

   1. Long hair

      1. Stick a toilet roll holder to your head and then use the toilet paper as “long hair”

5. Pick one of these props/ costume ideas and brainstorm comedic games/ bits (5 mins)

   1. Toilet paper hair

      1. Audience members try to “climb” the toilet paper hair like the prince climbing Rapunzel's hair to get up to the tower, but because it’s toilet paper it keeps breaking and we simulate the audience member falling to their death, and repeat

6. Repeat or dive deeper

   1. Repeat or go back in the process to any point if you want to explore more or start again

   2. Dive into any promising ideas that came up

Variations

1. Pick a difficult thing to make a prop/ costume of e.g. Fear, Big Ben, a car etc.

2. I already have a theme/ topic/ prop idea for my show

   1. Excellent, take that idea and skip steps 1, 2, or 3 and inject your idea into the relevant place.

Additional Notes & Resources

• The timers are there to stop you from overthinking ideas and just write down whatever is in your head. See Writing Comedy to Timers for more

• The specific number of items to brainstorm are there to stop you from fixating too much on one idea early on. See Following Writing Exercises and Specific Amount of Ideas

• Game

• Desire & Disaster - Goals, Stakes and Problems

• Making Props & Costumes for Clown and Character Comedy

Credits

• Charlie Jackson devised this method after watching Luke Rollason WIP Cheep Cheep at Edinburgh Fringe 2023 and wondering about how he came up with such wonderful prop games. Any similarity to other methods is unintentional.

• The £1,000,000 → £0 thing was taught to us by Elf Lyons, who does amazing workshops on devising.