If you have a kid in any grade from preschool to high school, you’re probably well aware that we’re right in the middle of Teacher Appreciation Week. And this week, as I helped get together a gift bag for my daughter’s teacher, I started reflecting on all of the great improv teachers I have had […]
As I mentioned last week, if you are improvising today, you're probably doing it online -- on Zoom. And what I am finding is that slowing down your improv works especially well on Zoom. Because improvising on Zoom is more like watching a film or TV show than a theater performance, gives you the opportunity […]
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 […]
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Lance Barber is best known for his role as Paulie G on the TV sitcom The Comeback on HBO, as well as Jimmy Speckerman in The Big Bang Theory. Lance studied at The Second City and iO-Chicago where he worked with the legendary Del Close. Jimmy sat down with Lance to talk about what he learned […]
I am so grateful that there are so many schools, teachers and methods of improvisation. It's the best thing for the art form and is one of the reasons it keeps growing. That was not the case when I started taking improv classes back in the late ’80s in Chicago. In those days, you had three places […]
If Del Close, one of the founding fathers of improv, had a mission (other than terrorizing some of his students in his classes), it was to make improv an art form. And if that’s true, that makes you an artist. Back in the ’80s, improv had very little respect. If you told people you were […]
What do you do if you are taking multiple improv classes at multiple improv schools and your head is filled like a piñata full of improv? Last week in my Art of Slow Comedy class, after we had warmed up with a series of two-person scenes, one of my students opened up and said since he is studying at The Annoyance, […]
SNL's Tim Robinson and Jimmy Carrane THERE'S NO RIGHT WAY TO IMPROVISE Last month Eric Voss of Splitsider wrote an excellent article about the importance of finding "the game" in an improv scene, quoting some of the biggest names in improv, including myself. Then a couple of days later, Sally Smallwood of People and Chairs […]
It's Not About Being Funny If improv is not about being funny, then what is it? You’ve heard it a million times: Improv is not about being funny. But what does that mean? If it’s not supposed to be funny, what’s it supposed to be? I have students pull me aside all the time after […]