Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit")[1] while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation.[2] Sketch comedy is a genre within American television that includes a multitude of schemes and identities.
History
Sketch comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where many brief humorous acts were strung together to form a larger programme.
Since 1999, the growing sketch comedy scene has precipitated the development of sketch comedy festivals in cities all around North America. Noted festivals include:
Sketch Etch A Sketch Sketch comedy Sketch story Dead Parrot sketch Sketch (drawing) Sketch (software) Hidamari Sketch The Sketch Show Undertakers sketch Multi-sketch Count–min sketch Albatross sketch Courtroom sketch Mr. Sketch Cheese Shop sketch The Big Gay Sketch Show Baroness von Sketch Show A Lightning Sketch Character sketch Spam (Monty Python sketch) The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. London Sketch Club Sketch-based modeling Daily Sketch Chicago Sketch Fest Count sketch The Keith Lemon Sketch Show Sketch Show (band) Sketch (2018 film) A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River…
Colony Oil sketch Sketch (mathematics) Sketch (TV series) Parrot Sketch Not Included – 20 Years of Monty Python SketchUp Sketch (streamer) List of sketch comedy groups Daily Sketch Fourball Tournament List of recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches Class sketch Two Funny – Die Sketch Comedy A Black Lady Sketch Show Four Yorkshiremen Wild Sketch Show Artist's Sketch of Pharaoh Spearing a Lion Planet Sketch Sketch (music) Word sketch Proof sketch for Gödel's first incompleteness theorem Bruces sketch List of sketch comedy television series Writers Guild of America Award for Television: Best Comedy/Variety – Sketch Series Sketch Engine Super Sketch Lifeboat sketch The Dirty Fork Sketch (Skins character) Sketch Artist Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1990–91 Sketch (restaurant) Argument Clinic Sevastopol Sketches The Sketches The Sketch Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1978–79 Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 1982–83 Sketch recognition The Bells Sketch Recurring Saturday Night Live characters and sketches introduced 2016–17 Modern Sketch Recurring Saturday Night