Truth in Comedy: The Manual of Improvisation

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The Art of Making Sh!t Up: Using the Principles of Improv to Become an Unstoppable Powerhouse by Norm Laviolette Kim "Howard" Johnson is an accomplished writer, performer; and improviser who has studied and collaborated with Del Close and Charna Halpern for many years. Howard is the author of the best-selling The First 200 Years of Monty Python, And Now For Something Completely Trivial and Life (Before and) After Python. He is also a veteran magazine writer; covering the worlds of film, television and fantasy for Starlog, Prevue, Comics Scene and Video Action magazines, as well as various projects for DC Comics. In addition to working for several years as a reporter and announcer in radio news, Howard has worked for and with the Monty Python group as part of the crew on Life of Brian. Upon making his home in Chicago, he began studying at Second City and performing stand-up comedy, and shortly thereafter started with the ImprovOlympic, studying and performing for several years, culminating in the writing and performing of the Del Close-directed Honor Finnegan vs. the Brain of the Galaxy.

A truly funny scene is not the result of someone trying to steal laughs at the expense of his partner, but of generosity — of trying to make the other person (and his ideas) look as good as possible.” Notable Quote: “The Group Mind is the Holy Grail of improvisation. It is the magic part of improvisation. It is the moment on-stage suddenly know what one another will do before they do it.”

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A hit-or-miss book that tries to teach improv. It contains some great insights about comedy, but the book itself is not at all funny; it has a few wonderful suggestions about what it takes to succeed at improv, and some of these suggestions are equally important for succeeding in all aspects of life, but the book also spends an inordinate amount of time on a single improv game called the Harold; there are a few good examples of how various improv techniques work, but also a lot of pointless celebrity name dropping. Del Close (March 9, 1934 �

And I think of Maria Bamford, who possesses a sheer technical mastery of so many of the skills at a stand-up’s disposal, but what sets her apart is the level of difficulty of the material. She is driven to talk about things that are hard to talk about. The stigma around mental illness is so prevalent that “stigma around mental illness” is now a phrase everyone is familiar with. But when Bamford was doing material about mental health in the early 2000s — like “I never really thought of myself as depressed, though, as much as [ gets ironically wistful] paralyzed by hope” — it was scary to bring up. Unlike being a perv and sexual abuser, apparently, mental illness has led to people losing work, having difficulty maintaining relationships, and struggling to be considered a full member of society.SHOW, DON’T TELL An improviser accepts what his partner says as a gift, and builds on that idea. He may respond with another gift, and the two of them build their scene based on the information in their statements. They must make active choices, rather than passive ones, and then follow through on their ideas. Everything said can be heard and used, even what might be considered a mistake. Since "action begins with the disruption of a routine," the "mistake" could be the disruption that begins the action. Too many actors make the error of talking about doing something instead of doing it; a potentially interesting scene gets frittered away because no one is actually doing anything. If the idea is active, it leads, step by step, to the next idea. But if the idea is talked away, the actors never arrive at the next idea. Suppose two actors are on stage, and one of them must choose whether to stay with his wife and children, or run off to a silver mine in South America. An inexperienced improviser might make the mistake of agonizing over the decision for several minutes, weighing the pros and cons. Boring! He might even choose to stay with his family. This is a more noble decision, but he's just chosen the routine, rather than the disruption, and we're left with no action. He's also wasted the audience's time wallowing in his angst. Chekov or Ibsen could probably script an interesting version of this scenario, but in improv, the active choice is the only one to take. Given the choice, any experienced improviser must immediately leave his wife and family, and run off to South America. If it's only a thirty-second scene, so be it — this allows us more time for their follow-up scene, which will obviously begin deep in the South American silver mine. See how much further the active choice leads? Scenes are much more interesting when the idea is seen, rather than talked about. Active choices forward the scene. Passive choices keep it stagnant. There's really no choice, is there? The set reminds me of something Early said to me when I first interviewed him: “People who are performing themselves, the way that we see who they really are is in the way that performance fails.” To do a bit like this, where the line between real and fake is ambiguous, in front of a studio audience of tourists and the most middle-American audience at home, is risky. Right away, this audience might not even register any of the performance as comedy, resulting in an excruciating four minutes of televised audience silence. However, it was still better than the alternative. “The weirdness of stand-up is that you have to pretend that it’s off-the-cuff,” Early explained on an episode of You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, talking about the Tonight Show set. “That is so embarrassing to me.” Independientemente de esto que les comento, vale mucho la pena leer el libro para entender, en algún momento y si les es posible con una mayor facilidad que la mia, el arte de hacer un "Harold"

THE PLAYER AS DIRECTOR When a player edits a scene, this means he's decided it's time for another scene, or perhaps a game or monolog. The ball is in his court, until the next editor/director deems it necessary to take over. As a director, a player may choose to enter a scene, rather than cut it off. "Walk-ons" are appropriate if a performer has an idea to help move the scene forward in the same direction that its players are moving it. Often, actors in a scene call for another player to enter, so the team members should always be listening for that call. Good walk-ons enter, give their initiation, and then exit. A walk-on must remember that the scene is not about him; he shouldn't re-direct ttie scene or become its focus. And he shouldn't enter in the first place if He doesn't have an idea to help the actors move their scene forward, because he only causes further confusion. Don't throw an anchor to a sinking ship — someone else will help. Don't fix it if it isn't broken! Players should never invade each other's scenes if they are going smoothly and don't call for assistance. As a director, a player may even initiate an idea for a split scene that enriches or illuminates the scene currently being performed. To do this, a player begins the split scene on the other side of the stage, instead of walking in front of the ongoing action and cutting it off. By beginning the new scene next to the old one, instead of crossing in front of it, the other players realize they are about to see a split scene. If there's any confusion, an actor can simply call out "Split scene!" THE QUESTION GAME This is a game for more experienced players — unless an actor is capable of improvising a decent scene without a handicap, he shouldn't try it in public. Any time a performer does a scene under a handicap, it requires plenty of concentration, whether they are improvising a scene in verse, in different literary or cinematic styles, or performing when the first and last lines of dialog have already been selected (all of which are valuable games, as well). In the Question Game, the idea of question-asking is fully embraced. During this exercise, only questions are allowed! A scene is built with no declarative statements at all. This can be surprisingly difficult. Only true questions are allowed, not statements bent into interrogatives by adding "don't you?" or "isn't it?" at the end. And to increase the pressure, the audience is encouraged to boo mistakes! Unlike the path of his friends and occasional collaborators Berlant and Early, it was Burnham’s unprecedented internet success that forced him to wrestle with what truth means and what truthfulness looks like at a time when honesty is equated with being publicly revealing. With 2021’s Inside, Burnham took this idea and blew it up into a virtuosic meditation on how to express yourself at a moment when the self is digitally fractured and how to connect with people when you’re forced to be socially distant. Shot in his guesthouse (must be nice), with equipment always in the frame and interstitials showing him setting up shots, it all felt overwhelmingly Brechtian. Contrasting the realism of his performance and the visual proof that it was clearly staged, over and over again in the special Burnham portrays how the internet has subverted the distinction between the real and the performed. And because it wasn’t stand-up, which has a built-in barrier between performer and performed-to, Burnham was able to call into question the very nature of digital performance that we all are compelled to participate in. As the players grow more experienced on stage, they discover they have an inner voice which, when followed, leads them to interesting twists in the scene. The unusual choices result in the most interesting scenes. A great intro to Harold and improv in general with some useful exercises, including helpful example scenes. I appreciate the simplicity of the idea that "the truth is funny", and that all we need to do is get out of the way to find it.KEY POINTS FOR CHAPTER EIGHT *Take the unusual choice. *Listen to your inner voice. *Reflect each other's ideas. LISTENING AND RESPONDING Hearing and listening are two different things. When a player is given an initiation, he must let the words resonate inside his head for a moment, so that he can decipher the underlying meaning. An improviser must consider what is said, and what is left unsaid, as well. He must think, "Why was that said? What does she mean by that? How does it make me feel?" If a player takes the time to consider what the other speaker means, then his response is more intelligent than the knee-jerk response (usually a one-liner that attempts to be witty). A more carefully considered response takes a second or two longer, but the wait is well worthwhile. A player's move is not complete until he sees how it affects his partner. When his line has been heard and pondered, his fellow player then responds from a similarly honest and emotional state. Some of the very best improvisers are those that listen an remember. Former ImprovOlympic player Chris Farley is an expert at this rule, both on and off the stage. Chris listens with his emotions; his fellow players can see him responding while they are still saying their lines. And he never forgets a thing that is said. Charna says Chris still reminds her of something she said or did years ago, which is why she finds "The Chris Farley Show" on Saturday Night Live so funny. Chris interviews show business giants by reminding them of his favorite moments from their films, saying "Remember when you did this . . . That was awesome . . ." Hosting his own talk show, he never asks questions — he just remembers! The SNL writers are very obviously heightening one of Chris' natural traits. He remembers everything! . Inside isn’t a live performance. There are multiple takes and camera setups over the course of many months. Still, Inside is the special of Burnham’s that connects the most emotionally with people, not in spite of its being his most contrived but because of it. It posits that attempts to remove artifice are actually artifice, but one can attempt to create artifice genuinely. In contrast, around the release of Inside, it became popular for comedians to include documentary footage in their specials, as if they were scientists offering mathematical proof. “See?” they’d say. “This proves that it’s real.” But how people behave in a documentary to a person like Burnham is also a performance, so to call it “true” feels false. Inside feels true because it’s honest about being manufactured. Lastly, having taken many improv classes, I believe that we need to participate and play to understand comedy, reading a book with comedy philosophy isn’t enough. An improviser needs to consider the most intelligent response he can give to a statement, and so he must feel he can take the time to stop and think. These moments of silence make a beginning improviser very nervous. He often tries to fill the silence with useless chatter, which only adds clutter to the scene. Improvisers have no reason to fear silence — in fact, more experienced players learn to appreciate it. The silence creates tension and draws in the audience. There is action in thought, and the audience finds a player's response worth waiting for. When an actor has a strong initiation, but becomes very verbose, he diminishes the importance of the line, and babbles away the energy behind his ideas. By taking his time and being thoughtful about his work, a player ends up economizing his words: he discovers that he can say more by saving less. The actor's cliché is very true: less is more.