Writing Funny - language, creativity and comedy

Dan Berlinka is a BAFTA award-winning and Writers’ Guild Award-nominated writer/producer with over 15 years experience in television in the UK and US. Dan studied English at Cambridge and Cinema at New York University, after which he began a television career during which he has worked with TV companies such as Sky, Disney, Channel 4, ITV, the BBC and even the World Wrestling Federation (!).

Dan has written scripts for numerous children’s comedy series including Shaun the Sheep, Horrid Henry, The 4 O’Clock Club and Dani’s Castle.  He also has several “grown up” sitcoms in development, the most recent of which, Icebreakers, was recently optioned by the makers of My Family, DLT Entertainment.

Brian Dooley has worked in comedy as a writer, script editor and associate producer.  He is best known for creating and writing The Smoking Room, which won a BAFTA in 2005.  Other credits include Monkey Dust, Being Human and Way To Go as well as plays for Radio 4.

Brett Mills is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of East Anglia, and has previously worked at Glamorgan University, the Open University and Leicester University. He is the author of Television Sitcom (British Film Institute, 2005) and The Sitcom (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), and co-author of two editions of Reading Media Theory: Thinkers, Approaches, Contexts (Pearson Education, 2009/2013).

He has researched television comedy since writing his undergraduate dissertation on One Foot in the Grave. He is currently undertaking the three-year (2012-14) Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded research project, 'Make Me Laugh: Creativity in the British Television Comedy Industry' (www.makemelaugh.org.uk) where he is working with comedy writers, producers and commissioners to explore the creative process, the relationships between creative workers and the television industry, and the factors that help and hinder comedy production.

James Robson is Senior Lecturer and Head of Department of Classical Studies at the Open University. His research centres on the classical Greek comic playwright Aristophanes, in particular the humour, obscenity and sexuality of the plays and their translation into English.

His publications include Aristophanes: An Introduction (shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League’s Runciman Award; Duckworth, 2009) and Humour, Obscenity and Aristophanes (Narr, 2006). James' current book projects include Sex and Sexuality in Classical Athens (Edinburgh University Press) and the co-editorship of Sex in Antiquity (Routledge).

Helen Eastman is a director and writer of theatre and opera. She trained at LAMDA after graduating from Oxford University in Classics and English with the Passmore Edwards Prize. She has just directed the 2013 Cambridge Greek plays (Prometheus and The Frogs) and in 2010 directed their Agamemnon. Helen is Artistic Director of Live Canon, for whom she has created theatre and site specific shows, installations and digital performances throughout the UK. She was one of 12 women invited to create work in the Phenomenal People series at the Festival Hall. She was Producer of the Oxford University Onassis Programme from 2005 to 2011 commissioning new theatre, opera and dance inspired by Ancient Drama.

She is Associate Artist of Oxford University’s APGRD. As a playwright and librettist she has written plays and operas for Oxford Playhouse, The Royal Society, Sheffield Crucible, Queens Hornchurch, Greenwich Theatre, Chester Open Air Season, ETO and the Young Vic, and translated opera, poetry and drama. Directing highlights include Circus Etc (The De La Warr Pavilion), Wild Raspberries (Citizens Theatre, Glasgow), Bug Off (OTC Dublin and tour), Cure at Troy (Delphi International Festival and Tour), Bridgetower (Hackney Empire and Tour),  Dido and Aeneas (National Tour for English Touring Opera), Speakout (Queen's Theatre, Hornchurch for English Touring Opera), Splat (Greenwich Theatre), Felt Effects (Theatre503), Hansel and Gretel (Cork Opera House), The Sweet Science of Bruising (National Theatre Studio), Cloudcuckooland, nominated for a Total Theatre Award (International Tour), Pots and Plays (site specific at Ashmolean Museum), Dear Father Christmas, Where’s Father Christmas, Bicycle Boy (Oxford Playhouse), Dusa, Stas, Fish and Vi, The Monument, The Gabriels (Finborough Theatre).

She is currently collaborating with Glyn Maxwell on a new piece of work. elen Eastman photo (c) John Watts.