Finally, somebody has found a way to do something constructive with teenagers’ natural tendencies to make fun of everyone and everything.

“You get in a long car trip with them and it can be hysterical, with them mocking us (adults) in a wonderful way,” said Tim Ferrell, a longtime comedy writer, performer and teacher. “They do impressions of their teachers nonstop. Their take on our world I find to be hysterical.”

Ferrell gets paid to teach comedy, so he’s decided to mine the fertile area of teenagers as would-be comics. He’s been teaching stand-up comedy workshops around Portland for more than a decade, but this month, he’s finally offering one geared just to teens.

Ferrell has spent some 25 years as a writer, performer and comedy teacher. He’s taught classes at the Comedy Connection in Portland, but the teen classes will be held at the former Hutchins School in the Ferry Village section of South Portland, which is now used by performing arts groups. The price is $250, with the first of seven classes slated for Saturday.

Ferrell decided to try a teen class because when he teaches adult stand-up classes, he always has a teen or two sign up.

“I think all of us make fun of stuff, someone at work or someone at school, as a coping mechanism. But some of us hang onto it beyond our school years,” said Ferrell. “I did, and my wife calls it arrested development.”

Ferrell’s teen class will be a place where teens will actually be encouraged to make fun of stuff, to be snarky and smart-alecky. But they will also be encouraged to be creative, and to write with clarity and purpose at the same time.

Ferrell says it’s one thing for someone to be funny at the dinner table or at a hockey game with friends. It’s quite another to be funny in front of a microphone and an audience, where everyone is expecting you to be funny.

So the class will help teens come up with funny content and teach them how to relax in front of an audience, as well as how to make pre-written material sound spontaneous.

“The first couple weeks, I don’t want them to try to be funny. I’ll tell them to just write down what you love, what drives you crazy, then we see what works,” Ferrell said. “They’ll find that the more they practice saying things out loud, the more conversational it gets.

“That’s the trick of a stand-up comedian: They want to make audiences believe they’re making this stuff up on the spot.”

The real trick for teens in Ferrell’s class — or adults in his classes, for that matter — is finding out if they still enjoy being funny once they have to work at it.

Staff Writer Ray Routhier can be contacted at 791-6454 or at:

rrouthier@pressherald.com