Portland Comedy Theater

No experience needed!

Best for: all students

Note: we've reframed both classes for beginners, intermediate and advanced stand up students. Carl will tailor your experience to your level. Beginners get to see sets modeled by intermediate and advanced students, and intermediate/advanced students get to recognize patterns and help newer students. It's what we've been doing as students hop from class to class to maximize their schedules, and it's time to officially recognize it.

Learn and experience standup comedy with Carl Wolfson!  Write strong material and develop your own personal style onstage.  This seven-week course will help you transform your personal experiences, observations, and point-of-view into a polished three- to five-minute set.  The final week will feature your performance before a live audience at Portland Comedy Theater! 

A veteran of more than 8,000 performances, Carl Wolfson has been one of the country’s top headlining comedians since beginning his career in 1980 at Hollywood’s Comedy Store.   During the 1980s and 1990s, he was a fixture on national television, appearing on Showtime’s Comedy Club Network, VH-1 Stand-Up Spotlight, An Evening at the Improv, and The Joan Rivers Show.   

His weekly segments on Thicke of the Night (“The Wolfson Report”) and Fox Network’s Late Show (“Carl’s Camera”) were the most popular features of each show. 

From 2007 to 2016, Carl was the host of “Carl in the Morning” on AM 620 KPOJ and FM 107.1 KXRY, Portland’s progressive talk stations. 

He is the author of the bestselling childhood memoir, Slide!  The Baseball Tragicomedy That Defined Me, My Family, and the City of Philadelphia – And How It All Could Have Been Avoided Had Someone Just Listened to My Lesbian Great Aunt. 

Member, SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America.