The afternoon sessions of our training course “Comedy as a Tool – Enhancing Youth Engagement through Humor” were all about putting the previously learned principles and techniques of stand-up comedy and public speaking into practice. But, before we got into that, we did a fun and relaxing energizer to get into the mood to perform. We also had the last chance to perform our stand-up acts in front of our teams to be fully ready to perform in front of everyone in the plenary.
And finally, it is the time to try ourselves as stand-up comedians, performing complete acts on different social issues in front of a live audience. Everyone got the floor and spotlight to do their previously created and rehearsed acts on jokes ranging from nationalism, stereotyping and discrimination to gender issues, mental well-being and of course Balkan conflicts. We had a lot of fun preparing our acts, but even more listening to what we have prepared for each other. After each performance, we gave and received feedback on our delivery and briefly discussed about the presented issues from youth work perspective.
It turned out that some of us are born to be stand-up comedians and performers, while others still need some practice and working on their stage fright. Nevertheless, this is why we are on this training course, so we can go through this process, learn and practice something new which we haven’t tried before coming to Krushevo.
To concluded the afternoon sessions with a reflection on the experience of creating and performing a stand-up comedy act. We focused on the process, learning outcomes and how we can use this methodology as tool for engaging young people in tackling important social issues in their local communities.
We ended the day with a mid-term evaluation of the training course, evaluating the quality of the program and used methodology, the learning process, logistics and practicalities.
