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.

Improv Vs. Comedy 2: This time it's personal

Hello Ben. Hello blog readers. Hello monitoring software. It's been too long.

Does improv need to make an audience laugh?

Short answer, no.

If you're after a longer, more rambling reply (and I suspect you are), then I'd say that improv doesn't need to make the audience laugh any more than a play does. Or a book, tv show... whatever. Drama can be just as entertaining as the funny that improv usually busts out, insofar as a hardcore need for amusement goes, I think audiences like variety - who doesn't? A bleak script/show tends to benefit from the contrast of some form of comedy; it can serve to juxtapose whatever tragedy the piece is about. It doesn't need to be funny, but it doesn't need to not be.

There's a common view that because most (frequently all the shows a given person has seen) improv shows are comedic, all improv shows are comedic. It isn't true and it bugs me plenty, but we're dealing with a funny old art form. It's been around in a coherent form for at least 500 years (that might warrant a guest blogger to explain properly by the way. Watch this space...) and so few practitioners seem to want to do more than emulate Whose Line.

Wait.

I'm off topic.

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.

Improv can and ought to cater to a range of tastes. We've all (I hope) seen beautiful improvised moments of deep anguish, blazing anger or poignant emotional truth that have stood out in a show precisely because they weren't funny. They were real, beautiful moments of drama, joy, whatever. And here's the kicker folks, not being funny makes you funnier.

I've only phrased it like that to keep you interested, I'm a shill.

Improv, to my mind, is about stories not comedy. Comedy is great, it's phenomenal at killing stories, which means it's a brilliant finishing move. But if all you've got is gag after gag after gag, it's going to get samey. And, as we all know, samey leads to fear, fear leads to hate and hate leads to bland shows.

And don't nobody pay for bland. Except maybe the Amish. (I wonder if they'll email and complain? Are there cyber-Amish? "We only use Windows 3.1. Every subsequent O/S is evil. Eeeeeevil.")

The trick I refer to is this: imagine the joke you could crack after 20 seconds. Now don't do it, keep playing it straight. Try making it to 40 seconds, then a minute. Then bust out the funny! Whatever gag will have more impact, simply because it contrasts. It's a change from what has gone before. Moreover, it's probably the end of the scene which makes you seem funnier! Pow! Zap! Blam!

My point, far from it though I may be, is this:

Improv in a vacuum doesn't need to be funny.

Improv that wants people to pay money to come see - moreover, that wants those people to come back to see it again - doesn't need comedy. It just has an easier time acheiving his goals with funny than without.

I don't know anyone who's looking to see a really well improvised tragedy. And maybe that's because nobody's selling yet...

I guess my short answer is in the second paragraph.

And it's this: "[improv] doesn't need to be funny, but it doesn't need to not be."

But what do I know? I am, after all, just a humble tailor.

Ephemera

IMPROV & COMEDY
1. There's been a couple of recent, somewhat polemic discussions on the Improv Resource Center about improv (specifically long-form improv) and its relation to comedy.

The question for you, Foxy, is "How do you see their relationship?" That is, does your improv need to make the audience laugh, or not?

That's an opening question. Perhaps we can have a blog discussion about this.

DIE-NASTY 2008
2. I found some photos from Die-Nasty 2008 online. I see our friend Cariad in them. At first I didn't think I found you in them, Foxy, but then I realized, YOU WERE MOUSTACHIOED!!

How I see improv

Last night my improv program had an informal performance. Foxy alludes to it in the prior post.

After the show, I was talking to one of the performers, who is a software engineer, who has presumably never performed onstage before, and who has never done improv for an audience before. He told me, "I think I'm addicted to improv."

I ended up sharing with him how I saw improv. This was an old view of mine that I rediscovered in talking to him. It basically is this:

Improv is unscripted drama. Pretty much the only difference between improv and plays is that plays have a script and improv does not. That means, in improv, the actors don't know what to say, but in plays, the actors do know what to say.

What that means in an improv class is that you are learning the structure of plays so that you can act them out in the moment without the aid of a script. You learn about the crafting of scenes and the crafting of plays. When you improvise, you basically become a playwriting collective: You use the structure of plays and follow that structure as your group performs.

Audiences unfamiliar with improv tend to see improv as saying funny lines. They think that when performers are onstage, they say funny line after funny line after funny line, and they have some mysterious gift or raging talent for saying funny lines.

But as you tend to learn in improv classes, your "lines" are really just behavior--behavioral reactions in the moment as you follow the structure of plays. You are doing something else other than saying funny lines. You are following playwriting techniques, and the result of following them sometimes is audience laughter.

When you analyze the laugh lines in an improvisation, abstracting them from the context of an improvised scene, you usually find there is nothing particularly funny about them. Instead, it is something about the moment that makes the audience laugh. In truth, it is usually what the improviser did that makes the audience laugh, rather than what the improviser said. The word "toaster" is not by itself very funny, but said in a particular context, at a particular moment, given the prior information in the improvised piece, and given the understanding of what the improviser's character may be trying to do, saying it may provoke an uproar in laughter to burn into an audience member's memory for a lifetime.

When you take an improv class, you realize improv doesn't have anything to do with saying funny lines. It is more about the interaction between characters, their conflict, and the movement toward a decision in that conflict. Granted, talk is definitely an element of the improvised scene, but it's not the focus. If you focus on the speech in great improvised scenes, you will usually find that it doesn't explain why they were so great. Instead, if you focus on the choices of the improvisers and the context in which those choices occur, you will have a better understanding of what made great improvised scenes so great.

So you learn about choices in an improv class, not about saying funny lines.

Granted, the focus is obviously going to depend on the beliefs of the improv teacher. Indeed, there are improv teachers out there who do care about saying funny things, and they may even denigrate you for your failure to say funny things. (I'm definitely not one of those teachers!) In rough, the approach may be a little bit different if you're talking a short-form improv class or a long-form improv class. In a short-form class, you may learn techniques that will make the audience laugh. In a long-form class, you don't really do that. Instead, you learn techniques to perpetuate improvised scenes. Essentially, in a long-form class, you learn about the creation of unscripted drama, while in a short-form class, you learn about the creation of audience laughter.

As a side note, though: To date, I've never really taken a short-form improv class, only listening to what others have said about it and about classes, coupled with what I've seen of short-form improv.

... So that's how I see improv. I come from the long-form perspective, so that's probably why I emphasize the dramatic elements of it (i.e., its play(writing) elements) rather than its comedic elements (i.e., its laugh-inducing elements). There is no right or wrong way to see improv, unless perhaps you set a way as right or wrong or subscribe to a particular mindset that sets a right or wrong way to see improv.