comedy structure
What happens, generally, is the actor makes an offer to the scene. The offer must be fully accepted and define the reality of the scene. Almost immediately the characters, setting, and conflict must become very obvious. It is from there that the improv builds on each other.
There are many rules to improv that give it its structure. Accepting, mentioned above, is probably the most critical. If you're given a scene to play out that has you upset about finding out your girlfriend is cheating on you and the person you're on stage with says, "Let's go hit him with a baseball bat," you can't usually say, "Or we can go shoot him." You're accepting the idea of hurting the guy, but not accepting of the idea of the baseball bat. You have to take the whole thing and learn how to focus it into moving the scene forward. If you don't accept it, it is called "blocking" and it really kills the improv.
Advancing is important. Learning how to keep the scene moving is a critical part of the structure of improv. There are a lot of ways to learn to do this and there are many tools you can learn and practice to get this technique down.
Aside from this, the general structure of comedy is the same. Comedy is built around setting up a tension and the release coming from the punchline - either a twist in the plot, a different way of looking at it, or often times just the truth plainly stated. What you learn from comedy classes, books, and studying comedy is the various ways those set ups and punchlines can be delivered. You learn how to structure the jokes so they're better for a stage presentation (making your friends laugh is a LOT different from making an audience laugh. The jokes often have to be set up a certain way and delivered a certain way).
Improv comedy is quite different from stand up. Both require a lot of work and practice to learn how to work in the structure, but stand up comedy is a very planned set of how things are going to go, what jokes are going to be told, and the order of the jokes. It takes hours of writing and compiling to come up with a set that lasts a few minutes. I wake up every morning and I write new material (while playing around online) until it's time to go to work. At the end of the week, I have a few new jokes worth considering. Then I have some new stuff I think will be worth trying at an open mic. Then I have some that work and some that don't. 5 pages of writing - 3...maybe 4 jokes. That's about normal for most comedians if they ramble in their writing as much as I do. With improv, you don't have ANY writing. Writing scipts and ideas is for sketch comedy, but is frowned upon in improv.
There are many rules to improv that give it its structure. Accepting, mentioned above, is probably the most critical. If you're given a scene to play out that has you upset about finding out your girlfriend is cheating on you and the person you're on stage with says, "Let's go hit him with a baseball bat," you can't usually say, "Or we can go shoot him." You're accepting the idea of hurting the guy, but not accepting of the idea of the baseball bat. You have to take the whole thing and learn how to focus it into moving the scene forward. If you don't accept it, it is called "blocking" and it really kills the improv.
Advancing is important. Learning how to keep the scene moving is a critical part of the structure of improv. There are a lot of ways to learn to do this and there are many tools you can learn and practice to get this technique down.
Aside from this, the general structure of comedy is the same. Comedy is built around setting up a tension and the release coming from the punchline - either a twist in the plot, a different way of looking at it, or often times just the truth plainly stated. What you learn from comedy classes, books, and studying comedy is the various ways those set ups and punchlines can be delivered. You learn how to structure the jokes so they're better for a stage presentation (making your friends laugh is a LOT different from making an audience laugh. The jokes often have to be set up a certain way and delivered a certain way).
Improv comedy is quite different from stand up. Both require a lot of work and practice to learn how to work in the structure, but stand up comedy is a very planned set of how things are going to go, what jokes are going to be told, and the order of the jokes. It takes hours of writing and compiling to come up with a set that lasts a few minutes. I wake up every morning and I write new material (while playing around online) until it's time to go to work. At the end of the week, I have a few new jokes worth considering. Then I have some new stuff I think will be worth trying at an open mic. Then I have some that work and some that don't. 5 pages of writing - 3...maybe 4 jokes. That's about normal for most comedians if they ramble in their writing as much as I do. With improv, you don't have ANY writing. Writing scipts and ideas is for sketch comedy, but is frowned upon in improv.
posted by david at 10:54 PM
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