How to Perform Sketch Comedy Like Dave Chappelle

Dave Chappelle manages to run an extremely successful and always funny sketch comedy show with a very small cast and a limited team of writers, accomplishing what not even the best sketch comedians manage to do. You can build on his skills to develop your own comedy material.

Difficulty: Challenging

Instructions

1. Work with a trusted writing and comedy partner to establish the theme and concept for your sketch comedy and to do the writing, as Dave Chappelle did with long time partner, Neal Brennan.

2. Find a venue for your sketchy comedy that allows you a relationship similar to Dave Chappelle's relationship with Comedy Central, which carries "Chappelle's Show." The cable network gave Dave Chappelle pretty much free reign when it came to creative matters, placing enough trust in the comedian for him to do the sketches he wanted.

3. Use your sketch comedy to tackle issues that usually make audiences cringe, such as racism in politics or the concept of a blind, African-American white supremacist (as Chappelle famously did in his first season) or the mysterious relationships of celebrities like Oprah.

4. Bring on talented but less-known actors like Wayne Brady, who hosted Dave Chappelle's show as part of a sketch, and Charlie Murphy, brother to comedian Eddie, who was a regular on "Chappelle's Show."

5. Create recurring character in your sketch so that audiences can look forward to regular characters as they did with Dave Chappelle's cocaine-dealing Tron Carter and the out-of-place Robot-Dancing Man.