What makes a show feel joyful? How can thinking about actors help you write your sketches? What’s the difference between a slow set-up and a confusing set-up?
Learn all this and more in this week’s installment of Saturday Night Later, with Marina, Madalyn, and special guest LAURA CANTY-SAMUEL!
Laura Canty-Samuel is a four-time Emmy-nominated TV writer, award-winning comedian, and former Co-Artistic Director of the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City. She has written for HBO Max, ABC/Disney, and Nickelodeon on shows such as Sesame Street, Mecha Builders, and The Not Too Late Show with Elmo. She is currently a writer for the hit children’s podcast Once Upon a Beat with Tinkercast/Wondery and for The Foundation, a Main Stage sketch comedy team at the UCB. When she’s not writing, she can be seen regularly on stage doing improv at The Second City NY and storytelling on the Main Stage for The Moth.
Madalyn Baldanzi is a comedy writer, director, and teacher. Most recently she wrote on Season 7, Champions Chat and Season 6 of The Champions on Max. She wrote for all four seasons of Go90’s Mr. Student Body President. Her Substack, “My Comedy Fantasy,” is about writing comedies and novels.
Marina Tempelsman is an award-winning writer and director. She is also a sketch comedy teacher and former Academic Director for the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre (specializing in their writing programming).
Her work has been featured by Comedy Central, Fusion, The New Yorker, College Humor, Funny or Die, Wondery, Audible, Radiotopia, and many other places, and she has worked with Disney and Adult Swim as a sketch writing consultant. After years of being asked by students why there isn’t a single book dedicated to the craft of sketch comedy, she is now developing Unusual Things: A Guide to Sketch Comedy for Writers, Fans, and Everyone Else.
She recently co-wrote and co-directed her first feature film (“This Will Never Work”), which is touring the 2025 festival circuit.
