I LOVE pitch meetings.* At their best, they’re the perfect middle ground between work and play — a chance to bat around sketch ideas with your friends. But I realized that if you’ve never been on a sketch team or in a sketch class, you probably haven’t ever gotten to see a pitch meeting in action.

… Until now!

A few months ago, I put out feelers to a bunch of different sketch teams to see if they’d be willing to share their pitch meeting. To my absolute delight, a fantastic UCB NY Maude team** called First Wife (directed by Chet Siegel) generously agreed! They recorded their meeting earlier this month, and I’m so excited to share it with you now.

Their pitches are so funny — but, even more importantly, they do such a wonderful job of supporting, developing, and playing with each other’s ideas. This meeting embodies so many of my favorite things about sketch, and we’re all so lucky they let us be flies on the wall.

If you’ve never seen a sketch pitch meeting before, I think you’ll learn a lot from this. And if you HAVE seen sketch pitch meetings before, I think you’ll still have a great time watching this one.

Huge thanks to First Wife and Chet Siegel. And go check out their show on October 5th, at 7pm ET! I’m excited to see what sketches make it in!

WRITERS: JR Atkinson, Henry Block, Rel Francis, and Charlotte Polk

ACTORS: Allisha Edwards, Luke Halferty, Shannon Keye, Jack Maloney, Harris Solomon, and Julia Zhen

Directed by Chet Siegel

*A pitch meeting is the first meeting in the cycle of a new sketch show. The members of a sketch team, led by a director, share their ideas with each other, and collectively tease out where those ideas might go. Over the next few weeks, those ideas turn into drafts of sketches. Then those drafts become rewrites. And then those rewritten sketches are whittled down into a lineup that becomes the show. Over the course of the month, a writer might write anywhere from 3 - 6 different sketches for consideration.

** Maude teams are UCB’s sketch house teams, assembled by the Artistic Director based on packets (for writers) and auditions (for actors).

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How important are vibes in a sketch show?

How can you improve the pacing of your sketches?

And… was that gameshow sketch specific enough?

All this and more in today’s episode of Saturday Night Later, with special guest Dru Johnston!

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Links from the episode:

* Dru’s sketch show in LA on 9/28/26!

https://www.crowdwork.com/e/matt-and-dru-we-re-dads-now-so-we-shouldn-t-be-doing-this?date=2026-09-28T19:30:00

* The article Dru mentioned, by Joel Morris in his Substack Gralefrit — take a look! It’s wonderful.

“The breaking point happened a few episodes in, when the team had solidified their own in-jokes, begun sharing references that made them snort. So we had Jools Holland, Mr Blobby, and the British Pork Ad Family. These weren’t cultural touchstones, or topical gags. They were the products of a protected in-group having to make one another hysterical, at speed. That’s the SNL formula. You don’t get two Eastern European men in floppy hats saying “We are wild and crazy guys” by going through the week’s headlines. You just leave Steve Martin and Dan Aykroyd to get the giggles. The moment Jack Shep rocked up on the UK Weekend Update desk singing strange little songs in the voice of school exchange trip nightmare Scrimpch, I knew the protective SNL spell was working for its UK team.”

…

“The secret is that SNL isn’t a comedy show. It’s a rock gig. Or rather, it’s a vaudeville show. It has heritage that we ignore at our peril. It utilises the oldest formula in the book, the wellspring of almost all the great comedy we love. And it’s not about jokes. It’s about energy. That’s the secret formula.

It’s music.”

How could you start that King Kong sketch faster?

Why are sketches set in yoga classes so hard to pull off?

And… was that invisible friend sketch confusing?!

Madalyn and I are BACK, and discussing the premiere of Season 2 of SNL UK!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Marina’s plug:

THIS WILL NEVER WORK, the feature film written and directed by Marina and Nicco, is now available for licensing on Kinema ! Check it out.

https://kinema.com/films/this-will-never-work-s-uoee

How does sketch comedy prepare you to pitch pilots to networks?

How do you find the balance between jokes and heart in what you’re writing?

What’s one of the less-appreciated traits in a fantastic boss?

We talked about all this and more in my wonderful conversation with Kristen Bartlett, with a special guest appearance by Jason Gore!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

And — here’s a link to Kristen and Jason’s show, Dead Dads Club:

How do you decide you’re ready to direct?

How do you handle pushback from a defensive writer?

What’s the difference between teaching and directing?

All this and more in this marvelous conversation with Matt Gehring and Niccolo Aeed!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Bios:Matt Gehring:Matt Gehring is a New York–based director specializing in comedy and performance whose work has been featured at The Signature Theater, Joe’s Pub, the Edinburgh Fringe, Comedy Central, Netflix, and Just For Laughs: Montreal. For five years, he ran the comedy residency at the Obie Award–winning Ars Nova, developing 25 original shows, and co-created the long-running musical comedy show SHIZ at UCB with two-time Tony winner Shaina Taub. A Shubert Scholar with an MFA from Brooklyn College, he has directed projects in collaboration with artists such as Bowen Yang, Chrissy Shackelford, Chloe Troast, Alexis Gay, and Matt Rogers, creating and shaping original work for stages worldwide.Niccolo Aeed:Niccolo Aeed is an award winning screenwriter, director and comedian. His first feature film, co-wrote and directed with Marina Tempelsman, This Will Never Work, won Best Screenplay at Brooklyn Film Festival, and Best Narrative Feature at the Dumbo Film Festival and SF Indie Film Festival. He’s half the comedy duo Marina and Nicco, whose sketches have been featured in The New Yorker, Funny or Die, the UCB, PIT and College Humor and more. Plays include If You Do This Right You'll Probably Break Their Chest (Ars Nova) and To All My Supporters (Ars Nova), Room 4 (The PIT) and Unpacking: A Ghost Story In the Dark (HERE Arts). Nicco's other plays include One Morning Soon and The 5th Epic of Cheri which were both featured at The Fire This Time Festival. He teaches sketch with the UCB, and has directed the Maude teams The Foundation, Pretty Boys, House of Birds, Find My Friends, and Golden Hour. He hosts the podcast Copaganda where he watches cop films to learn about policing in America.

What’s the difference between an “opinion” and a “take”?

How can you leverage writing about a current “condition” vs. a current “event”?

What makes a writing packet pop?

We discussed all this and much, much more!

Take a listen. And, as always, feel free to comment with your thoughts and questions — or email them to [email protected]!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Bios:

Kate Sidley is a WGA Award and Peabody Award-winning, Emmy-nominated comedy writer and performer who wrote for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Beyond television, her work can be found in The New Yorker, McSweeney's, and Reductress. Her first book, How to Be a Saint, is available wherever books are sold.

Pratima Mani is a Peabody-winning, 4-time Emmy nominated, 2-time WGA-nominated comedic writer and performer based in New York City, who most recently wrote for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.With roots in NYC’s live comedy scene, she has written for The New Yorker, Reductress and College Humor Feature Players Program . She’s a finalist of Spotify's "Sound Up" US podcast bootcamp and her short film “Stitched” screened at Hollyshorts, Rivverrun, New Filmmakers LA, Julien Dubuque, CAAM Fest and won best short at IFFSA.

How do you find the “musicality” in an impression?

How can you use your hips to develop a character?

How can “elasticity” help you build dynamics within a scene?

Frank and I had a great conversation about all this and more. Take a listen, and subscribe (below) to learn about more episodes like this — including next week’s conversation with Late Show with Stephen Colbert writers Pratima Mani and Kate Sidley, about topical and political sketches!

Guest Bio:

Frank Garcia-Hejl is a writer, actor and director living in Los Angeles. His credits include Dropout’s “Make Some Noise”, Montreal Just For Laughs New Faces: Characters, CBS/Viacom Showcase, USA’s First Impressions, Broadway Video’s Más Mejor and Comedy Central’s Comics to Watch. Frank has been involved with UCB since 2007 and has been teaching improv, character and sketch there since 2013.

What is good etiquette for giving feedback?

How should you structure a sketch class?

How do you get butts in seats for a live show?

All this and more on this very special episode of Saturday Night Later!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

For additional questions, send us an email at: [email protected]

What a fun ending to the very first season of SNL UK — with plenty of teachable moments! (Especially when it comes to the first half page of your sketches.)

Thank you everyone for tuning in this season. And send questions for our mailbag episode next week to [email protected]!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Why should you watch out for references in your sketches?

What’s the difference between a low-energy character and a sketch that feels boring?

How do you avoid accidental de-heightening?

All this and more on this week’s episode of Saturday Night Later — with special guest Tristan Griffin!

Thanks for reading Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Bio:

TRISTAN LEE GRIFFIN is a NYC-based comedic actor and writer, originally from Rome, Georgia. A house sketch comedy performer at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade Theatre NYC and a Just For Laughs New Face, Tristan can be seen performing with his sketch team, The Foundation.Tristan’s credits include: Dickinson, American Horror Story, White House Plumbers, That Damn Michael Che, WeCrashed and The Politician.