Does your teen have a flair for the dramatic? If so, National Comedy Theatre (NCT) in downtown San Diego is offering their popular two-week camps again this summer. NCT has been on India Street for the past 16 years, and they offer improv theatre performances every weekend.
Some Coronado locals may already be familiar with NCT because of its Coronado connection: the improv club at Coronado High School. I recently caught up with Gary Kramer, Artistic Director of both the New York and San Diego NCT locations. He told me a bit more about the theatre and the Coronado High School improv team, as well as more about the summer camps.
Coronado Times (CT): Tell me a little bit about your story at National Comedy Theatre (NCT) first. How long have you been involved, and what do you love most about it?
Gary Kramer (GK): I am the Artistic Director of the company. I started NCT, and I have been there since 1999. I’m a cast member, but I also direct the artistic vision of the whole company and direct the Mainstage Cast.This is our seventeenth season with about 5,000 shows. The Mainstage Cast does 300 shows a year on Friday and Saturday nights in our theatre. Every performance is different, and we as a cast can connect with our audience on so many different levels on any given night.
CT: Tell me about the High School League. How many schools participate in San Diego? Can you tell me how Coronado High School is involved?
GK: We’ve run the league for 15 years now, and there are 18 high schools in it this season. The league will kick off again in late August or early September.The way it works is that we train all the schools, and each school gets a coach from one of our cast members. We train throughout the year, and the school club self-directs and rehearses on its own.
Throughout the course of the year, the clubs will do matches against each other — a comedy competition — at one of the schools. A lot of the schools have bigger audiences than we do at our actual shows! Some schools do competitions once a month, more or less often; it’s up to the school. The schools can play whomever they like of each other, and there are a lot of friendly rivalries.
At the end of the school year, there’s a tournament at our theater where everyone plays against everyone else. They are judged by the professionals at NCT, and at the end we crown one team the winner, runner up, second runner up, and other awards based on the course of the tournament (ie. Most Embarrassing Moment, Most Memorable Moment). The winner gets to play against our professional team for the Friday night show. We always lose! We’ve never won! But, of course, the entire audience votes and is filled with friends and family. It’s as it should be!
Two years ago, Coronado High School won the tournament after only their second year in the league. Usually the winner is a school that’s been around a while, but not in the case of CHS! The league is open to any school — private or public — in SD county. We have a wide range of schools, like Parker School and Monarch School (private schools), as well as many, many public schools. There is a wide range of demographics, too.
CT: How long as NCT been offering this summer camp? Can you tell me a little bit about what the students will learn and how? Who will be teaching them? Do they need to have any background in theater?
GK: We’ve been running the Summer Improv Comedy Camp for almost 10 years. It’s a two-week program, Monday to Friday each week, from 9:30am to 3pm each day. I think we have one or two teens who are doing both! The camp sells out every year, so this year we doubled it and are offering two sessions. The camps are open to anybody, and you don’t have to audition to get in.
The camp itself teaches a mix of improv comedy and sketch comedy. During the morning, the students study improv while working with two of our Mainstage players. During the afternoon they write short sketches, similar to what you’d seen on SNL. A lot of the ideas are born in the morning during the improv section, and then they’ll transform it into a sketch if they think their idea has legs.
The show at the end is brilliant; it’s so great! Two weeks of playing around, having fun, and laughing together culminates in this performance. It’s for friends and family, and they usually pack the joint, and it’s just very very funny. The show is both improvised and sketch. You don’t even know how it’s going to work because half of it is improvised! It’s like building a plane and loading it with passengers, and then pushing it off a cliff and seeing if it flies.
——–
If you are interested in learning more about National Comedy Theatre or their summer camps, visit their website here. Gary also invited everyone to their shows on Friday and Saturday nights as well as the final performance of the camp. The camp shows are free to attend, and they will be on Fridays at 1pm on August 5 and August 19th. Thanks so much, Gary!
