#improvisational comedy

[canmking]

R i c h a r d P r y o r

[nixon-official]

IMPROVISATIONAL COMEDY IS A COMMUNIST PSYOP!!!!

Yes and? YES AND???

Clearly a tool to condition people to be more susceptible to hypnosis and mind-control!

[publicsillystuff]

"This Betty White scene from The Golden Girls still never fails to make me happy, 30+ years later. Betty improvised most of the story, and Bea Arthur and Rue McClanahan couldn't help but lose their composure and slip out of character. RIP to a comedy queen." [source]

[thecomedybureau]

The Del Close Marathon Is Finally Arriving in LA Jun. 28th-30th

The renowned all-day, all-night, and all-weekend long improv festival known as Del Close Marathon or DCM is landing in Los Angeles after its long, celebrated run in NYC. 

From Friday, June 28th to Sunday, June 30th, the best improv teams around will gather to play through all hours of this weekend. The schedule and line-up are TBD, but all shows will happen at UCB’s 3 venues (UCB Franklin, UCB Sunset, and UCB Inner Sanctum).

Get more details and watch for announcement here.

[twittercomfrnklin2001-blog]

Abigail's Party

Writer-director Mike Leigh has disowned the television version of his ABIGAIL’S PARTY (1977, Criterion Channel, YouTube) because it’s simply a filmed stage play. I can understand his disappointment with its visuals when compared to such accomplished works as SECRETS & LIES (1996), TOPSY-TURVY (1999) and MR. TURNER (2014). The piece is shot on videotape and confined to a single set. At times, it looks like a TV sitcom. Yet, it’s far from just a filmed play or a canned comedy. The editing has a precision and comic rhythm that makes it feel cinematic, and there’s one shot, as a marginalized character returns to the main room from behind a bookcase/room divider — so she’s glimpsed through openings among the shelves — that’s a thing of beauty in its expressiveness

Married and childless Beverley (Allison Steadman) is throwing a drinks party for her new neighbors, nurse Angela (Janine Duvitsky) and footballer-turned-computer-operator Tony (John Salthouse). The only other guest is an older neighbor, Sue (Harriet Reynolds), whose unseen daughter, Abigail, is giving a loud party next door. It sounds like more fun for the guests than the party we’re watching, and it’s certainly better attended. Beverley belittles her husband (Tom Stern) throughout the evening. badgers her guests relentlessly to accept drinks and cigarettes, even when they don’t want them, flirts openly with Tony and reshapes every part of her reality to make herself the star and the only correct person in her world.

With its domineering wife jostling for power with her husband, the script seems like WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?, but its focus is more on class than emotional chaos. Beverley is an arriviste, a former cosmetics salesperson who’s married well, even if she and her husband rarely see eye-to-eye. But he’s just as flawed as she, flaunting his leather-bound Shakespeare collection that he’s never read and complaining that the neighborhood has gone downhill because it’s become more “mixed.” The two married couples are both trying to rise into the middle class, while the only truly middle-class character, Sue, is a pale shadow, haunted by her divorce and apparently henpecked by her daughter. The piece has its satirical elements but never comes off as truly nasty. Leigh developed the characters in improvisation sessions with his actors and then threw them into the situation to see what would happen. And it’s honest improvisation; the characters don’t baldly state their objectives the way they do in some improvisational pieces. As a result, each of the five (even Reynolds, who only joined the cast for the TV version and didn’t participate in the original improvs) gives a lived-in performance. Even one-word lines seem endowed with history and psychology. Their humanity makes even the monstrous Beverley sympathetic. But the characters are also resoundingly funny. You believe in them so much you’ll likely find even simple reaction shots hilarious. These are people you know. You’d probably run the other way if you saw some of them on the street. But you still know them by the time the evening is over.

[ingoodtastedenver]

The Second City Comedian Rhapsody

One goes to a Second City show with high expectations. Afterall, this is where comedy greats including John Belushi, Steve Carrell, Stephen Colbert, Tina Fey and many others earned their chops over the last 60 years before making it big. The cast of The Second City Comedian Rhapsody, running July 17-Aug. 11, 2024 at Garner Galleria Theatre didn’t disappoint in our expectations of this newest…

The Second City Comedian Rhapsody

[bornofthegarden]

Cldimprov's "Ways to shitty up a scene"

[heathervstheworld]

"For this little bit of time, you're so connected to another person or a group of people that you're able to hear this music that's always there just beyond your sense and it seems to help determine what it is that you're supposed to do next. And now everyone is hearing it." -improvisation at the speed of life

Being presented with our commemorative “EWING HOUSE TROUPE” plaque, to remain forever in the hallowed halls of the Dallas Comedy House.