If you want to write a comedy church skit, you should create funny characters.
And with an all amateur cast you can create funny characters and humorous drama that is entertaining, but still delivers a powerful message.
Here are some skit writing techniques to create funny characters and humorous church dramas.
To Create Funny Characters Form Skit Characters Around Your Actors
A Hollywood script creates a character and then the director finds an actor to play that part. But that’s Hollywood. And those actors are professionals. They dedicate themselves to learning how to play a variety of characters.
Using amateurs doesn’t mean your actors lack of talent. But they won’t be as versatile as a professional. So instead of making them adapt to a part in your skit, fit the part to them. In other words, create a character that complements their natural personality and talents.
Is your actor naturally gregarious? Make their skit character gregarious. Or in real life, thoughtful and analytical? Do the same with their character. And if they can talk with a French accent or impersonate Elvis, incorporate it into the skit.
By forming the characters of your drama around the actual personalities and talents of your actors, you create a part that is easier for them to naturally play and a character the church audience will enjoy.
Use Stereotypes To Create Funny Characters
A 3-5 minute skit does not allow enough time for much character development. So using common stereotypes makes it easy for your actors to assume a part and your church audience to understand the essence of the character.
The dumb blonde
The computer geek
The insensitive jock
The power hungry executive
These are all familiar characters that are easy for actors to play and easy to form into a humorous skit. When you think about the funny characters of movies and sitcoms you’ve watched, they are often built around a stereotype. I’m sure as you engage in your skit writing, you’ll think of many others.
Use Exaggeration To Create Funny Characters
Don’t just make the blonde in your church skit a little dumb. Make her really dumb. Your insensitive jock, completely oblivious to any life outside of sports. The computer geek unable to hold a conversation with an actual human being. Someone not just afraid of heights, but paralyzed in fear on the second step of a ladder. The more you exaggerate, the funnier it is and the less likely the actor in the skit will resemble an actual person in the church.
Use Contrast To Form Characters
Even a person in your church with minimal acting ability will have your church audience laughing by simply putting them into a skit character that is the opposite of who they are in real life. And you may be surprised by that person’s willingness, not only to accept the part, but to ham it up on stage.
Is there a solemn usher who always wears a suit to church? Put him in a long wig and a rock band outfit. Let your children’s pastor portray a spoiled, bratty kid. Your most talented vocalist play an American Idol contestant that sings way off key.
By using familiar people in your church with known traits and talents and putting them into a role that is the complete opposite of who they are in real life, you create instant humor for any skit.
Use these techniques to create funny characters and comedy skits. Your church audience will laugh while you also present a spiritual message.
A good way to create comedy skit characters is by using backstory. That’s because short comedy skits give you little time for character development. An effective, dramatic element that will help is the use of backstory. Here are some writing techniques to help you.
Create Comedy Skit Characters Using Emotion
Whether you’re writing a short comedy skit or a one-act comedy play, the key to an engaging drama is to infuse it with emotion and conflict. And the best way to accomplish it is through well-rounded, funny characters.
The backstory is essentially the character’s past. Perhaps a major event or experience, important people who have influenced them, childhood goals and dreams. It helps the audience understand the attitudes and psychology of characters. In other words, the reasons they behave the way they do.
One of my church skits, A Standing Offer, opens with a scene where a man who has just lost his job makes phone calls looking for leads on a new one. His back story is a recent crisis. And that crisis adds emotional conflict.
Through phone conversations with prospective employers and dialogue with his wife, you sense the urgency, and the financial pressure to support his family. You also learn that long ago, his father made an offer for him to join the family business. And that becomes an important part of the skit’s spiritual lesson.
Create Comedy Skit Characters Using An Ongoing Element From The Character’s Past
Some writers create an extensive historical background for their characters. Although that is overkill for a skit, it’s still helpful to know something about your character to predict how they might react to different situations.
But think of the backstory like an iceberg. Two-thirds of it is under water and will never surface in the drama. Because if you try to reveal everything in the character’s backstory, you will probably bore your audience to tears. It’s there so you the writer know what is motivating your characters.
When your goal is to create funny characters for a comedy skit or comedy play, put an element in the character’s backstory that contributes to the humor. What if your character who is living in New York was raised on a pig farm in Iowa? And throughout the comedy skit or comedy play he consistently presents pig farming analogies in his dialogue?
Or maybe she was once hypnotized and every time she hears a bell ring she breaks out singing the National Anthem? Since this is a comedy skit or comedy play, you have creative license in exaggerating characters slightly beyond the realm of reality.
The most common way to reveal backstory is through dialogue and action as you progress through the comedy skit or comedy play. It’s important to maintain a well-paced progression. Too much, too soon, will look forced. And you want it to have a natural flow.
Create Comedy Skit Characters By Using Narration And Inner Dialogue
Narration and inner dialogue are also effective techniques to create comedy skit characters.
The narrator is a simple and straight forward approach. At various moments within the comedy skit or comedy play, the narrator steps in to explain the backstory. He can even relate the backstory’s emotional impact on the characters.
Inner dialogue is performed through voice-over as your funny character is posed in contemplative scenes. In my one-act comedy play, Mystery of the Lost Meaning of Christmas, the main, funny character is a Sam Spade type of private detective. Voice-over dialogue throughout the play narrates his inner thoughts along with his backstory.
Christmas with the Klooks, a short one-act comedy play, is built around the backstory of Frank, a grandfather who carries a burden of guilt over the death of his daughter many years ago. The backstory is revealed slowly as the play progresses.
At first, it appears that Frank is just a cranky old man. But as the intensity builds, you realize something more is at work. And finally at the end, it reveals the pain and personal guilt that Frank has been carrying for years.
Using backstory to create depth to the characters of your comedy skits and comedy plays allows you to create conflict, emotion and comedy that grips your audience and delivers your message.
Writing a church comedy drama can be fun and rewarding. They may be amateur productions, but don’t have to be amateurish. You have many talented church members to call on. Maybe not professional comedians, but they can still be funny. Other professionals in your church can also provide needed resources.
In one of our church productions, a church member who was a commercial, graphic designer created a set design that far surpassed what a local professional scene designer accomplished. He also produced all the visual marketing material. And another church member who owned a local manufacturing company made a fake display of elevators that supported the event.
They were so real looking that during the night of the production, guests that didn’t attend the church tried to use them. Now that was funny!
Use these tips to guide your efforts for church productions that make a spiritual impact.
Decide on a Theme for Your Church Comedy Drama
Whether it’s a 4-5 minute skit or a full play, start with the theme. Write it down in one or two sentences. If you start writing your script without nailing down the theme, you may write funny jokes just to get a laugh. It’s a common trap for those who enjoy writing comedy.
Humor is extremely effective when writing church comedy skits and drama. But in a church context, it should always focus on making a spiritual point. So be clear at the start what that spiritual point is and keep that target always before you.
For example, in my one-act, church comedy drama, What’s In a Promise? the theme is… God made a promise to us that He kept, so we should keep the promises we make. The entire church comedy script is written to support that theme and the resolution supports it too.
Create Characters For Your Church Comedy Drama
Professional actors are skilled at changing their persona to match a variety of different funny characters. Their professional career depends on the ability to be versatile. You give them a funny character and that’s who they become.
In church comedy, you’re mostly working with amateur actors. Although, there are many people in your congregation with natural comedy acting abilities too. It’s just not what they do all the time, so they’re not as versatile in portraying humorous characters as a professional actor. They tend to have a few, funny personas where they excel, but as they move away from characters that are natural for them, they become more stilted.
So rather than create funny characters and then ask your actors to portray them, create humor that is tailored to the natural strengths of your actors. In other words, think of the natural abilities and personalities of the people you want to use as actors, and then create comedy characters and humor that feature their strengths.
Does someone have a funny, foreign accent? Can they impersonate someone famous? Do they have a natural tendency you can exaggerate to create humor? The more you capitalize on their natural, humorous abilities, the more natural and funnier they will be.
Use Popular People in Your Congregation For Your Church Comedy Drama
Is there a favorite church usher that everyone adores? And he has a funny habit you can exploit? A church youth pastor with a well-known quirk? Impersonate these people and exaggerate their particular traits and quirks to make your church comedy skit funny. Of course, be sure they possess a sense of humor and don’t mind getting picked on a little. People can be a little funny about laughing when the joke is on them.
Things that might not be that funny generally, will be hilarious to your congregation. And can be used effectively to make a spiritual point in a church comedy skit used to enhance a sermon.
What about the time someone slipped in the church baptistery and splashed water into the choir loft? Something funny that happened on a church retreat or mission trip that everyone knows about? They make great material for church comedy skits and your congregation will laugh harder because they’re all in the joke.
Keep these three tips in mind as you write your scripts and you’ll produce church comedy skits and dramas that are both funny and spiritually effective.
And I’ll send you my article: Exaggerate to Make Your Presentations Funny. You’ll learn how to punch up your presentations with humor.
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