Cheese Grater Magazine: Sketch Producer

I have always loved sketch comedy - I grew up on DerrickComedy, SNL, and Monty Python. My friends and I would film dumb videos of us acting out absurd scenarios involving distinct characters, which we would immediately delete afterwards because we didn't want people knowing that that was how we spent our time. Joining the Graters this year has been pretty cool, as it's nice to have delusional streams of consciousness that were written down at 2 am validated as funny and creative! As sketch producer, I would not only follow the standard sketch of group-editing submissions, but I would also make sketch meetings a space where members can pitch ideas, co-create sketches, and focus-group comedic acting techniques and tone - you know, democracy and all that jazz. I think that the Graters would also benefit greatly from the regular production of video sketches, where there are less limitations and would open the door for more collaboration among members from video editing, acting, and writing. Like, if you want to do a dinosaur sketch, it would be a lot easier to edit in a dino than buy a costume (I checked). If you have an idea you think is funny, I want to do everything to help you realise it - unless it's not funny. I would also make the Graters more organised - everyone can take on a task for a given project and set themselves a personal deadline with my support - this way we can work as a team! I can also do a good hillbilly accent and that's gotta count for something.

A Grater upon birth, I fully embrace the controversial, confusing, cathartic, and sometimes musical, turn that our artistic expression can take. The Comparative Literature student in me loves how sketches unite writers, comedians, actors (of varying abilities), folio artists and gremlin impressionists.  

The Graters will continue to emulate classically rib-tickling sketch comedians while also expressing individuality-so that alongside the apple pies in the figurative pie showcase that is a Graters show, there are also experimental ones such as green grape, crawfish or heck, crusted mac n cheese concoctions that taste so damn hilarious despite hardly qualifying as pies.  

New members this year exemplify sketch’s value at university. I aim to recruit more in part by posing the simple question, ‘Why settle for great when you can be Graters?’. As UCL’s premier sketch group it is for those already bloated with sketches as well as those who are fatefully to express themselves through a series of vignettes, be they closely linked or loosely connected. We will realistically churn out more performances at university and, mainly metaphorically, wet its seats with laughter. Currently part of many performance-related societies, I also hope for inter-society sketches. 

As sketch coordinator, I would uphold collaboration, diligence, and passion to ensure that this singularly chaotic family, by virtue of their brilliance, will remain far from