The Bastion's Second City/Columbia College Comedy Studies Program cub reporters are back with another update on their progress at silly school. Benjamin Vigeant and Greg Guiliano are flexing their funny muscles and learning a thing or two about being funny without being "jokey."

Benjamin Vigeant: One of the more intriguing things to me in this program is the approach that we're taking to it. Having trained at the UCBT in New York, the approach was about teaching comedians how to do comedy, or at least that was the feel that I received from it. In this program, it's far more focused on teaching actors how to do comedy.

Greg Guiliano: Which is nice. It's putting less emphasis on the "be funny" and more on "write/perform real, interesting theater....that happens to be funny." Which is odd, for how much of a focus on comedy everything has. The reason I said it's nice is that it feels like all this will have greater utility outside of comedy.

Benjamin Vigeant: Part of why it feels like a more complete acting experience is probably because we have so much time, and instead of trying to stick in one or two classes each weekend or night, we get to have several across four days, each week. But it's just interesting to me, because it has been a long time since I really tried to stretch my acting muscles as much as just my "comedian be funny muscles."

Greg Guiliano: What Ben is saying is he needs to work out more.

Benjamin Vigeant: This sort of hilarious zinger humor is the sort that you can readily pop off if you're the type that studies it for credits.

Greg Guiliano: No need to knock on my zingers. I try. That's the important thing. The other important thing is that a lot of the stuff in class, although it's been taught for quite some time to quite a few different people...it still feels relevant and fresh. Stuff that, while I've heard some of it before, still rattles in my brain as something important to listen to. I imagine most school is supposed to do that, but I actually feel that happening with this. Not to say that it's all serious business. We frequently get distracted in class just by listening to our teachers tell old stories about various Second City alumni. Which I know we've talked of before, but there's always something new that makes me feel like mentioning it again.

Benjamin Vigeant: Actually, its more or less us trying to get them out of them.

Greg Guiliano: true, they usually don't want to tell us those stories for time purposes.

Benjamin Vigeant: As Greg said, some of the things said in class are things that I've heard before in various other comedy performance settings. However, within the context of a focus on acting, and within the context of all of the classes we're taking at the program as a whole, it does gain a new sort of meaning, and it gives me a better understanding of how that whole comedy jokes business works.

Greg Guiliano: Not just that, but theater in general...and what theatre in specific. Someone, no names, had a perfectly fine piece of theater brought to class and was told that, while a fine piece, it wasn't meant for a Second City stage. That is to say that it's not the kind of piece that would go up here, and they should think about what kind of venue would use it.

Benjamin Vigeant: Greg's lousy piece aside, we are constantly urged to think about a more Second City sensibility to the sketches that we write. As much as this sounds obvious, we have to make sure that they have things like a beginning, middle, and end, as well as clear objectives for most characters. The general belief is that most comic pieces, like on SNL, tend to just have a beginning and maybe a middle, and/or just might be a way to deliver on a wacky joke premise. The idea we're being taught in writing, as well as in general, is to round that out and stop being so jokey.

- Elizabeth McQuern