In Chicago, anything that you’re doing, the community gives it value. Every little improv show, every scrappy reading, and every lead on a Goodman mainstage. It’s all a promising opportunity for a young actor.
I saturated myself with the improv community.
’24’ is a pretty serious show – there isn’t a lot of improv that is happening. Having said that, I do play around with the delivery. A lot of the humor comes from playing a character who is very furious and really up in her own brain and in a serious situation. That is humorous to me.
I love comedy and did a lot of comedy in college. I was in an improv comedy group with my friends.
Honestly, my biggest education regarding improv comedy actually came on the job working for ‘My Boys.’
I’d always liked having a laugh with my friends, and I’d done comedy in plays; but then my friends asked me to join this improv troupe and it went well and I started performing with them.
I think when a lot of actors hear improv, they think of throwing a line in or doing a slightly different take.
Wrestling is like improv. You have to feel and sense what the other person is going to do next and respond faster than they do.
I’ve always felt that improv looks and feels more clever when you’re there to experience it live than when you have the degree of separation that television creates. Television raises expectations.
I joined an improv comedy group. Ours was named ‘Quick Fire!’ with an exclamation point. It was when I auditioned for that team and got on it and felt like… I’ll just say I felt like I was good at it.
Sometimes I think your intellect can get in your way as an actor or an artist. When you come from a world of improv and comedy, you’re able to let it flicker and fall out.
Maybe it’s just my improv and sketch background, but I’m a lot more comfortable in a group. I like sharing focus and populating an ensemble.
I never went to acting school, so improv was my training. Just being quick on your feet helps in everyday life.
The current Babe Ruth of improv? Sacha Baron Cohen. He’s pretty amazing.
I fell into acting because I was really shy, and so at night after work, I took public speaking and improv classes, and I started going to auditions sort of as a dare. That was my version of ‘Fear Factor.’
Second City Las Vegas is very different from Second City in Chicago on the main stage, where they do improv sets. That’s how they kind of hone material, kind of work up to new material.
I can rap. Not openly in the world, but it’s important that people know! I can rap for a very specific reason, which is that in college I was in an improv comedy group, and we did musical improv.
I always wanted to be a stand-up comedian, even as a kid. Me and my dad would watch ‘Evening at the Improv’ on A&E.
The thing I love about YouTube is it’s almost like having an instant audience for improv.
In high school, we would do improv. Me and my boy were, like, the stars of the class.
River City Improv set the stage for my career.
Black people who want to do comedy go into standup, where our heroes opened a lot of doors. Improv doesn’t have a ton of heroes that you can look to.
Stylistically, in improv, I don’t think you can have as many camera tricks; I think you’re kind of shooting more like a documentary: you don’t know where it’s going, so you have to hang back a little more.
I’m a comedy geek so anything comedy related, whether that’s standup shows, improv shows, I’m all over that. That’s my favorite way to be entertained always.
‘New Girl’ was a wonderful experience, but for seven years, we were shooting single-cam that is not handheld, that is traditionally shot, and they’re asking you to improv, and you’re on location. It’s a real grind.
I’ve been working straight since 2003, so I might just want to take an improv or theater class. That excites me. I can’t wait to do different characters – not necessarily the leading chick who gets the guy, but the weird, freaky cousin.
If you pay attention, stand-up can be great improv training ground. But one of the things that helped me the most was doing warm-up for the ‘Mr. Show’ tapings way back when.
Soccer is the most improvisational sport. There are no set plays. And in soccer, as in improv, you are trying to find the flow.
Stand-up and sketch and improv – that’s the most direct contact you can have with somebody, making them laugh. I like that. I like the intimacy.
My rule of thumb is to always do what’s on the page first. Then you can talk to your director about playing with it. Improv frees me up in a character, but I would be mortified if the writers who agonized over their words assumed I thought my improv was more valuable.
Many improv groups give off the same positive annoying vibe that I associate with Christian Young Life groups with shows that more resemble children playing than a comedy performance.
The good thing about having chemistry is, when you get to the improv section of a scene, you’ve got somebody to feed off. It can go on and on and on, and the sky’s the limit.
I did, like, one or two plays in high school, but I don’t think I realized I wanted to do comedy until I got to college, and I started doing improv and saw the Upright Citizens Brigade perform and did workshops with them.
I have always been doing sketch comedy since I was a kid because one of my mom’s boyfriends was an improv comedy guy so were doing skits all the time growing up.
When I started doing improv in Chicago, for every five teams, one or two would have one woman.
The improv, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but when it does, it’s like open-field running.
The thing about improv that I really love in scripted television is that it really makes a moment authentic.
Improv is always seen as something that’s funny, but worth a $5 ticket, $10 at most. I think ISC is one of those shows that is worth a real ticket price. It’s hard-hitting and great and different every time.
After college, I knew I wanted to work in comedy, so the first thing I did was go to where the comedy was. I moved from Charlottesville to Chicago, because that’s where The Second City and Improv Olympics are. You have to go wherever you need to go to study what interests you.
What I think improv is great for is making dialogue more natural.
I love doing improv. I love comedy. I have always felt this way, even when I was really young.
An improv team would have eight guys and one woman; that was still pretty standard. If you were a woman improviser, it was actually kind of an advantage because, if you were halfway decent, you’d get a lot more stage time.
I’m definitely not frowning on improv; I mean, I’ve been doing it for years. I just think that there’s some styles of comedy that warrant a tighter pace.
I seek out things that terrify me, like an improv class. I’m terrified of sharks, but I scuba dive. I’m not good at auditioning, but I force myself to do it all the time. I’ve never met anybody who is fearless, but the more you push against your own boundaries, the easier it becomes to push.
It was improv that really helped me start coming up with recipes and just believe in my instincts. That’s why the first recipe I made up was ‘I Ain’t Chicken Chicken’ because I finally felt bold and fearless in the kitchen, which was an entirely new feeling for me.
In the happy scenes there were really fun times. Sean would say really funny stuff because he likes to improv. I would want to laugh, but you are not allowed to do that during the take.
My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at – with a partner, doing comedy sketches.
You can do a whole scene in acting without ever checking in to what the other guy is saying – it’s not going to come off great, but you can get through the scene – whereas in improv, that’s gonna be impossible.
What I love about improv so much is that we are all discovering it at roughly the same time. The performers are maybe, what, a half second ahead of the audience? There’s very little lag time. I think of a thing, I say it, then the audience is laughing and it all happened in a second.
I was always a big fan of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner’s ‘2000-Year-Old Man’ sketch. I think it’s one of the biggest influences on the podcast, definitely. You’d never say Carl Reiner was the funniest dude on there, because he’s just teeing it up, but he knows what questions to ask to lead to great improv.
What brought me to L.A. was work! I moved to Chicago after college – I went to Kalamazoo – did my nerd thing, graduated, and moved to Chicago to pursue improv.
I love sketch; it’s my favorite form. But if it’s all improv, they’re either very good, and it’s annoying how good they are, and it makes you feel bad, or they’re not too good; then you’re sweating for them.
I think with a lot of comics, their gift is improv. They don’t have a script. They’ll have a couple of good ideas they start with, and go from there. And it’s the same in wrestling.
I started working right away as a kid, so I didn’t have a chance to go to improv school or anything like that; I was already a working actor.
Once we got the scene down, we were told to improv.
I’ve always said my whole career that I wanted to write by the improv credo, ‘don’t negate,’ which means, even if you didn’t care for something, you try to make it work. You don’t say, ‘Oh, that particular story didn’t happen.’
