Recently, Foxy wrote:

Anyhoo. I think a show needs fulfil any promises it has made to an audience. By which I mean if you're selling a show as funny, you have to bring the funny. Imagine going to the "action movie of the decade" and finding out that it's a period drama about a happy goatherd and his affable father. It would be totally contrary to your expectations and you'd rightly feel cheated.

I really like what you say here, Foxy. I wholeheartedly agree: If you advertise yourself as something, you had best live to the expectations you set with your billing. Else, you're misrepresenting what you do. You potentially disappoint the audience. You take their money and run.

Now, granted, given that improv is not rehearsed (at least in the same predictable sense as theater), there is some room for failure, and audiences should probably realize that (well, they probably already do, many seeing improv as "sub-prime theater" or "unfunny theater"). But performers, if they're going to charge admission and charge audience time, need to get to a level of performance such that failure happens rarely. Now, what is meant by "failure" is partially determined here by how you advertise your show, and partially determined here by performing to general theatrical conventions or standards (speaking so the audience can hear, etc.). "Failure" isn't some vague concept.

As for the necessity for comedy in improv, I can't remember offhand what I wrote earlier on the subject, but of those people who think improv must make the audience laugh, those people throw the word "improv" around as a synonym--nay, abbreviation--for the term "improv comedy." That is,

Given some people,

"improv" = "improv comedy"

This is not a mathematical equation, else it would sound contradictory. ("Comedy" would probably equal zero!) It's just a definition. It's saying that when someone says "improv," he means "improv comedy." This is to say that for these people, "improv" must make and audience laugh because, Hey, that's improv! (What they mean is "Hey, that's improv comedy!")

The discussion is much like this for these people: Should insurgents terrorize? Of course they should, if you use the word "insurgent" as a synonym for "terrorist."

Remember that the word "improv" refers to styles of many different things, not just comedy. A jazz musician could say "Let's improvise" and probably no one takes that to mean, "Okay, sure, let's put down our instruments, get up, and crack each other up with scenes." You village has just been wiped away by a flood. "We're going to have to improvise" doesn't necessarily mean staging a show; it means building your home out of sticks and mud.