Kevin McDonald Teaches Workshop at Unexpected Productions Today

Kevin McDonald of the Kids in the Hall will teach a one-day workshop, Improv Into Sketch at Unexpected Productions today, March 7, 2015. We will then perform with the students and members of Unexpected Productions that evening. In a group of twenty to thirty actors/improvisers, they will learn how to write comedy through performance, and use improv as a writing tool. By the end of the workshop, they will be able to write sketches through improv.

Students take these improvised scenes, work on them and make them into full comedy sketches. Kevin will go from group to group, helping and guiding with the "writing" of each scene.

After getting notes, revising and presenting the scenes again, the workshop will end with the groups going away and finalizing their scenes. The now fully written scenes will be performed that night in a special show at Unexpected Productions. This workshop will improve your acting and writing skills, and will teach you how both skills work in unison to create great scenes and hilarious comedy.

The students will perform their now fully written sketches one last time for everyone at a show at Unexpected Productions hosted by Kevin McDonald. Kevin will open with a stand-up than the students will perform their master sketches. The night will end with Kevin and Unexpected Productions' Artistic Director, Randy Dixon being improv based on the audience's suggestions.

Kevin McDonald has written for The Kids in the Hall, The Martin Short Show, and Saturday Night Live. This is his second workshop with Unexpected Productions.

He founded The Kids in the Hall with his friend Dave Foley. They met in Toronto at the Second City Training Center, and the two wrote and performed in sketches together more than any other pair in the group. In the troupe's TV show and stage shows, he portrays several favorite recurring characters, such as the King of Empty Promises, Sir Simon Milligan, and Jerry Sizzler. Still, it's a frequent running gag that McDonald is the least popular member and always struggling not to get kicked out.

Since The Kids in the Hall's end in 1994, he's played many roles in movies like Boy Meets Girl, Agent Pleakley in the Lilo & Stitch series, and Harry Potter in Epic Movie. On TV, he has appeared on The Martin Short Show, Ellen (as a radio personality), That '70s Show (as a confused young cleric, Pastor Dave), Seinfeld, Friends, NewsRadio (on which Foley starred), MADtv, Arrested Development, and Corner Gas. McDonald has also done voice work for various animated series, including Invader Zim (in which he did the voice for Almighty Tallest Purple), The Angry Beavers, Catscratch (in which he voiced Waffle), and Clerks: The Animated Series. He also played an imaginary friend named Ivan in the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends episode Sight For Sore Eyes, and appeared in the music video for "Roses" by Outkast.

In 2006, McDonald hosted a CBC Television special, featuring several of Canada's best-known sketch comedy troupes. "Sketch with Kevin McDonald" won a Canadian Comedy Award (Best-Taped Live Performance - The Minnesota Wrecking Crew), with The Imponderables nominated for the same award.