In improv, we are always striving to be authentic on stage, but teaching authenticity can be a tricky thing. One of the people who taught it the best was Del Close, an improv teacher I studied with who influenced a generation of comedians from Bill Murray to Chris Farley to Tina Fey to Amy Poehler to […]
As you know, one of my favorite topics to talk about is shame, especially how it affects improvising and performing. Nobody has done more research on the topic or is filled with more of it than I am. That make me an expert on the subject. In all seriousness, it is killing me. Shame is the […]
This is the blog you are getting this week. I am pretty sure it’s not my best work. I can live with that, since when you get this I will be finishing up a five-day vacation with my wife, Lauren, and my daughter, Betsy. It is our first official family vacation. Hopefully, I will have […]
If you’ve ever watched a painfully bad sketch on SNL, you know that writing good sketches isn’t easy. While there’s no perfect formula for a funny sketch, there are a lot of important elements to consider when trying to write something that will actually make people laugh. This week, I asked Sam Bowers, director of […]
We all want to do the perfect improv show. Every move is brilliant. Every edit is just right. Every scene is hilarious. But what happens when in the first couple of minutes of an improv show we bomb big time? Well, if you are like me, you feel shame. You shut down. You become best […]
I was so stupid when I starting out improvising in my 20s. I really didn’t think I needed people. My goal was to “make it” all by myself. I laugh now thinking about it. I chose an art form that requires you to depend on other people, yet I was committed to making it all […]
A common thing that we hear in improv is that we need to commit in our scenes. This is true, but being committed in a scene doesn’t mean that we can’t make changes or adjustments to our characters as the scene is going along. A good improviser is always adjusting in the moment, which includes […]
As actors and improvisers, we deal with rejection on a regular basis. And even though I’ve been improvising and auditioning for a really long time, it’s still hard to not to take rejection personally, because I am still looking for outside things to put a big stamp of approval on my forehead. When I audition […]
Last Sunday, during my Jimmy & Johnnie show at Second City, John Hildreth and I invited Joe Bill, a well-known improviser and teacher in Chicago, to play with us as our special guest. John and I have been playing together for almost seven years, but I have known Joe much longer, from my days at […]
I have a good friend who is an accomplished singer and actor who recently got a great callback for a play she auditioned for. She put a lot effort into the audition and she was excited about it, but a couple of days before the callback, she started to doubt whether she really wanted the […]