Sketch Comedy at Westlake High School is a one night show that highlights students' acting and ability to make people laugh. 

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Participants work for hours on their performances: memorizing lines, timing, movements and more.  The bond formed amongst the students is amazing. 

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Throughout the 10 sketches, the students managed to keep the audience laughing, either with puns or someone getting hit in the face with pudding. Many students got the chance to showcase their skills with leads, such as Paul Occhiogrossi in his lead role in WWll 101; Michael Newell in one of the sketches he wrote, Millionaire; and Tycho Force, Lucas Finkel and Patrick Weemals in Fortune Cookies. Not to mention the many other leads and background characters.  Last but not least, Henry Sliss led the show and made sure everyone knew their lines, places, costumes and more, with some help from Ms. Denler, made the show a great success on Friday, May 31st 2024. 

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A sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character or situation.  Sketch comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where a lot of brief humorous acts were strung together to form a larger programme.  An early, perhaps the first, televised example of a sketch comedy show is Texas Star Theater aka The Milton Berle Show 1948-1967.  Recently though, groups have been introducing overarching themes that connect the sketches within a show with recurring characters.  

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Sketch comedy festivals in cities all around North America have developed since 1999 due to the growing sketch comedy scene. Some of these festivals are the Chicago Sketch Fest, SF Sketchfest and more.

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The next Westlake Sketch Comedy show will be in the Fall of 2024.