Skit Blog: Recipe For A Skit Disaster
Done right, with plenty of rehearsal time, commitment and effort, your drama presentations can add some delicious spice and scriptural flavor to your event or church service!
Done wrong, however, they can be a stomach-churning, distasteful experience.
There are many tips, advice, helps, etc., on this site, to support your performance of the scripts you find here. But this page is devoted to providing you with a recipe for making crummy skits. After all, there are already so many crummy skits being done, surely someone would like a proven recipe for making one.
So, print out this page, put it in your recipe book, and follow its directions to the letter the next time you want to pull off a truly terrible skit performance!
Ingredients:
Two heaping cups of Procrastination
A half-pound of Sloppiness
16 oz. of Unpreparedness
The slightest pinch of Rehearsal
At least a half-dozen Excuses
Directions:
Put off looking for a suitable skit script until the VERY LAST MINUTE. Procrastination is an extremely important ingredient in the Skit Disaster dish. After all, skits are just last-minute, unimportant, toss-together in no-time little things, right? So don’t think ahead, wait until a few days before the event to try to prepare. If ordering a soundtrack, wait til a few days so that the Post Office can’t get it to you on time. If it does arrive the day before you need it, procrastination has done its work, since your actors will have very little time to get used to working with it. If you really want the skit to fall flat, or you are too cheap to do it right, just skip the soundtrack completely and have somebody off-stage fake the sound effects vocally into a microphone!
Once you have found a script at the last minute, no matter how great it is, remember: you can turn it into a Skit Disaster with no trouble, by tossing in the Sloppiness ingredient. Sloppiness is key in making a good script turn out bad. So apply it liberally to all aspects! The dialog, do it sloppy where no-one can understand it! The staging, do it sloppy and just wander around the stage aimlessly! The sound effects and music, just slop them in wherever and at any level! The props, just grab some stuff and sloppily throw them in a box, maybe they’ll work!
Unpreparedness is a wonderful aspect of the Skit Disaster recipe. It really won’t turn out as bad as it could unless you add this in liberal quantities. Even a little of this spells trouble for a drama presentation, so use a lot to make sure it goes horribly wrong! Don’t give your scripts to your actors until too late for them to memorize them, just have them walk around the stage pretending to act while really reading the script! Nothing screams “Unpreparedness” like that. Unpreparedness will ensure that the message of the script goes unheard. All the audience’s attention will be focused on the bad performances, and the idea in the script will be totally missed. See how easy it is?
Next, use the tiniest pinch of “Rehearsal.” Just a pinch, a teeny-tiny grain, the less the better, really. Too much of this will make your Skit Disaster turn out too well done.
Finally, offhandedly toss all the elements together and serve lukewarm with a side garnish of “Excuses.” You really can’t have a Skit Disaster without plenty of Excuses to wash down the bitter aftertaste with. Here are some ideas:
“I didn’t find the site until it was too late.”
“I was too busy to do a good job.”
“Nobody really expects too much from skits, anyway.”
“I’m really no good at this, I’m only doing it till they can find someone else.”
“We’re not professionals. Besides, the Lord can’t use people who are too well-prepared; everyone knows that study and planning quenches the Spirit!”
These are just a few examples. If you are determined to serve up a Skit Disaster, you will more than likely have some Excuses of your own to garnish it up with.
This dish is quite filling. If done according to this proven recipe, your audience will not want another serving for quite a while. If they still do, then increase the quantity of the ingredients next time, while decreasing the amount of Rehearsal you put into it. It may be that they have never seen skits or drama done any other way, in which case, you may be called upon to serve more at various times.
Good luck in making these scripts into a Skit Disaster!
WHAT WE OFFER:
Dramatic Plays:
Our plays range from 20 minutes all the way up to 80 minutes. They are written to engage the viewer, make them think, to impact the emotions, and present the Gospel in such a way that they perceive it as meeting the needs of their life. The aim is to bless the believer, and give the person that has never made a decision for Christ a desire to invite Him into their life.
Comedic Skits:
Our skits range in length from 5 minutes up to 20 minutes. While most are comedic in nature, using humor to impart a perspective that may not have been considered, the laughs are all tied into the message, and there is always a resolution that leads the viewer into consideration of the Truth contained in it. The humor can be enjoyed by all ages.
Soundtracks:
The soundtracks that we make to accompany the scripts add drama and emotional impact to the script’s performance. There are two different kinds of script and soundtrack; the kind where you do the lines live and the soundtrack is played at certain times during the performance; and second, the kind that supplies all the narration, music and effects mixed together to play as the actors perform, with no lines to learn. Each script description page tells you which kind it is under the “Soundtrack Key.”