If, Then - Part 1

Start > Base Reality + Yes, And > First Unusual Thing > Game (If, Then) — UCB Improv Manual (Besser et al., 2013) Illustration by Dyna Moe https://ucbcomedy.com/store/ucb-manual/

I am having ongoing technical woes this month, all unrelated to each other. Currently I've been without home internet for 14 hours, which makes pulling together a post challenging. I've been rewatching this set from The Smokes. I love how the game develops during the second beat, starting out with Chris Kula and Billy Merritt talking about Billy's character, Lonesome Sam, being a roadie setting up for bands at the LA Forum. Then a misheard line about the band Phish being the creature fish sets up Katie Dippold to tag in and make Billy a bear, the part he was born to play. This game is pure improv. There's no way anyone thought of where this scene was going until that tag-in move happened. It's all base reality until Katie tags in to frame Billy's weird obsession with fish and salmon as him being a bear.

You can graph this: Obsessed with fish (Merritt) > He's a bear (Dippold) > Bears like honey (Merritt) > Alice Cooper has a pic-a-nic basket (Woods) > Maul the guy with the basket (Merritt) > Alice Cooper loves blood and gore (Wingert). Each ">" is an if/then move built on the foundation of what came before. Each one springboards into the next, fueled by the pure energetic agreement to have fun with this. This exact game could easily fizzle with another team, but here the moments snap together like magnets.

I Get to Fail Tonight

I have a show tonight which means my brain is currently trying to plan for an improv show. It won't be successful. I get to thinking about the pattern game open to maybe the first beat I'll be a part of and then realize that I

Premise

Some stray thoughts on premise. In the UCB manual, premise is defined as: [T]he term used to describe a fully-formed comedic idea found in an opening that strongly suggests a Game. — Besser, Roberts, and Walsh, The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, p. 94 I don't

A photo in black and white. A young African-American boy's weight and height are recorded by a twenty-something African-American nurse. The boy is shoeless aThe era appears to be the 1940s.

Heightening - Part 1

Using the excuse of my laptop being blown up and off at a repair site to continue my series on the building blocks of improv. I have been fortunate to be able to take some classes online and in person with Will Hines. During my first class, I asked a

What Improv Is Teaching Me About Writing

A Brief History of Writing I've been open about who I am on the internet, so I might as well say that this is me. This is the closest I've come to doing what I wanted to do for a living. In 2006, somehow TWENTY YEARS

Sign up for The Beat Up

Read more

I Get to Fail Tonight

Premise

Heightening - Part 1

What Improv Is Teaching Me About Writing