Most comedy performers are scared of making people laugh

by Steve Roe, director of Hoopla!

I used to think that new performers had to learn how to make people laugh. And quite often this is what they think too.

However I've changed my mind about this recently. I think the actual core problem isn't 'making' people laugh, it's 'letting' people laugh.

Comedy performers are not scared of NOT getting laughs, I think the actual problem is that they are scared when the laughs actually happen. Comedy performers are scared of getting laughs.

They think they want to make people laugh, but the first time it starts to happen they do everything they can to stop it immediately.

Sometimes I wonder if performers are subconsciously doing everything they can to not be funny.

EXAMPLES
A new stand up keeps saying 'no seriously', 'only joking', 'why are you laughing', 'stop laughing' etc. Eventuallly the audience listen, and stop laughing.

New stand ups leave big gaps between their lines, so that the crowd settle back to normal and the laughter stops.

A clown exercise. Student is in the room instructed to make people laugh. He tries to sit on a radiator that is too thin to support him. We laugh. So he stops trying to sit on the radiator and does other things instead. We don't laugh. If he'd kept on trying to sit on the radiator we would have kept laughing.

Sketch workshop. Set up of a patient who is deaf coming in to tell the doctor that the doctor's car is parked on double yellow lines. Every time the patient tries to tell him using sign language the doctor misunderstands him, diagnoses something horrible and then removes part of the patient's anatomy. The game sounds simple, and it made us laugh, but the actors put in extra bits like having an examination - that stopped the explanation of the parked car AND removal of body parts (the funny bits).

Impro Show. A comedy character - an Earwig spy, is getting a lot of laughs from the audience. The other actors tell it repeatedly to shut up, which it does, so the audience stop laughing. The actors stomp on the earwig and kill it. The actors have limited and stopped the funny thing.

QUESTIONS RAISED

• Why don't we pursue and expand what is obviously making people laugh?
• Why do we 'turn off the funny'?
• Why are we programmed to avoid long term laughter?
• Why don't comedy actors and performers seem to like it when an audience actually laughs?
• Why does laughter make us shut down what we were doing?

FEAR OF RIDICULE
When we are growing up a group often laughs AT someone who is different from the group as a group signal to change that thing in order to later be incorporated into the group and gain greater safety.

So when the new improviser hears laughter they sometimes actually stop doing what they were doing (i.e. the funny thing) so that it immediately stops.

But the comic actor and comedian in the modern world should not differentiate between being laughed AT and being laughed WITH. In fact deliberately making a group laugh AT you is fun.

Don't fear 'making a fool of yourself' in comedy. You are already making a fool of yourself, you're doing comedy.

SOCIAL TRAINING
When growing up the kid that makes everyone in the classroom laugh is often seen as naughty or is referred to as the class room joker.

The act of making people laugh is therefore undervalued and also seen as a bad thing from quite a young age. It is the pointless, uncontrollable and naughty thing that distracts from the serious school business of studying how waterfalls form gorges.

This continues outside school with the most common adult response to the sound of laughter being told to "shut up".

At work and meetings people have a laugh, before getting down to 'serious business'. Laughing in the workplace is often seen as disrespectful to the status hierarchy and people who are constantly laughing at work are probably seen as skiving off or childish and unprofessional. We still make people laugh in a naughty way - sending emails, quick looks, secret coffee meetings etc.

So no wonder the performer doesn't pursue the laughter - to do so has been programmed in them as naughty, childish, unhelpful and distracting.

MODERATING ENERGY AND LACK OF CONTROL
I've already mentioned a few times already, the lack of control that comes from laughter, and I think it's another quite primeval instinct.

If you think about it a room full of people laughing in a room for an hour is quite a strange sight. They open up their mouths and make strange noises, they shudder, they crease up, they breathe funny, they slap their sides and each other, they shake. (This bit mentioned in Jimmy Carr's The Naked Jape).

They have basically been made entirely useless in one big mass. They would be unable to operate machinery in such a condition.

If you are the one responsible for making a group do this it's no wonder that it takes a lot of guts to keep doing it to them. You are basically solely responsible for sending a group into a really odd state.

You're lack of control and lack or responsibility on stage has given rise to the audience abandoning control and responsibility, which ironically you then feel responsible for and have an urge to control.
Experienced stand ups and improvisers make use of this state and build on it. They keep giving and giving so that the atmosphere builds and builds. Inexperienced performers actively try and stop it - they fear the primeval animal instinct they have unleashed.

New stand ups tend to leave massive pauses between jokes. Ask them and they'd say it was their 'style' but I think it's actually to allow the crowd to return to 'normal' to make sure nothing untoward happens. The crowd aren't there to be normal though, they are there to laugh uncontrollably.

Improvisers do something similar. A scene tips, into the place where action happens, which leads to laughter. But immediately a scared improviser will make everything better, right the balance, make it safe. The action stops and nobody is laughing, and yet they think this is helpful. They want to be a comedy performer yet the moment anything untoward or energetic happens they balance it and stop it.

Couples who own dogs have often noticed that the dog will sit between them on the couch the second they attempt to have a cuddle or get a bit flirty - the dog will put itself between them and steadily sit there. It looks cute but apparently it comes from the pack mentality of conserving energy. Dog/wolf-packs attempt to conserve energy, which limits the need to hunt, by limiting internal fighting, flirting, and general interaction.

So sometimes the comedian can inadvertently play this role, and actually serve to balance the group and make it normal, when actually we want to tip it into the world of excitement and instability.

LESSONS

• Fight your fear, let people laugh with you, at you and around you.
• Be positive in sketch development to expand the core funny bits and spot the game in the mess.
• If people are laughing, do it, and then do it more and make it more.
• Keep doing it, there is no limit to how much people can laugh other than how much you want to let them laugh.
• If people aren't laughing, do something else.
• Directing comedy is easy. Experiment and play until you find something that makes people laugh. Expand that thing and play with it more. If people are laughing it's probably funny. Be constructive and positive, but also be honest and critical.

Keith Johnstone says laughter is misleading, and I do agree somewhat in that it can be misleading and that's where experience helps. But overall if you don't think laughter is important, you shouldn't be doing comedy.

www.HooplaImpro.com

The difficulty of things practiced...

Earlier this month I did Stand-Up for the First Time at the Miller, which as the name suggests was a stand-up night for people, like me, who had never done stand-up before. Although I've done a lot of Improv performance, and love the nerves you get before going on-stage, there was something about this night that was giving me a different kind of nervousness. But what was there to be nervous about? After all, it was just a 5 minute slot.

I think the answer lies in the fact that the stand-up set was something that I had written and put my actual thoughts down on a page. Being nervous about this is little odd, in that the real subconscious you is more likely to show itself during improvisation, and surely the threat of unveiling this is something that should be feared more? Having a script to rely on was in effect putting a curtain in front of the subconscious and taking back control of the destiny of the 5 minutes that you'd be on stage.

It was this control that was making me nervous and I was way more concerned about what the audience would think of my "set" because I had spent time writing it (admittedly not as much time as a should have) than if I was doing Improv. As late that 6pm that day I was still seriously contemplating chucking in what I had written and just Improving something up on stage. I thought better of it, after all, what's the points of challenging yourself to do stand-up if you just fall back on something that you're comfortable doing?

As it happened, my set went OK. Of course it would have better if I'd had the opportunity to test it in front of audiences beforehand, but that was the whole point of it being a first time. I do think I have the nugget of a very good and potentially funny idea (The Moment of Clarity), however it does need some work and the reference to Hitler invading Poland was probably taking it a little too far.

As for everyone else, I'm not going to name names, but having seen both nights of SUFTFT, I thought the overall quality of everyone performing was excellent. Would some of them have gotten booed or heckled at a normal comedy night? Probably - but it goes to show how much difference a positive outlook makes. If you close your ears and eyes to something new, it's only yourself that's missing out.

My next blog will be on the simularities and differences between Improv and Cricket. Focusing on the question of "form".

C Jam.

A New Generation Of Punk Rock

In a divorce settlement between me and sleep, I would cite the following three documentaries:

Westway To The World (2000) directed by Don Letts
Dogtown and Z-boys (2001) directed by Stacy Peralta
The Filth and The Fury (2000) directed by Julien Temple

Each one has struck me that a group of passionate individuals can come together and by sheer grit and determination will eventually find success, despite the world around them acting disinterested and/or aggressively negative.

I couldn't help but draw comparisons between the plight of early punk-rockers and skaters - struggling to have their art-form recognised - and the community of improvisers that surround me who are working hard on putting on brilliant shows while possible audience members wander unknowingly by.

Joe Strummer, the front-man for The Clash, was an intellectual and brilliant man with a passion that could rip a hole in parliament. Watch Westway To The World and you can't help but be struck by how focussed he was in achieving his goal. Hang the punk conventions on the wall, this guy avoided mind-limiting drugs and people who would lead him astray. Punk Rock was his addiction, his religion and his reason. I could list plenty of improvisers who feel the same about their art.

The Clash went on for longer than most bands have ever managed, and produced brilliant songs throughout their time; songs that everyone knows. A rare accolade for any band, and certainly one that won't be managed by any current popular television-age act I can think of.

There is footage of the Z-boys Skateboarding Team in Dogtown where they unleash their stunts on an unsuspecting crowd at a 1970's skateboarding competition. Until that moment skateboarding had been a balletic sport performed by pretty-boys in tight white vests and finely coiffed hair-dos, who did graceful handstands on their boards and balanced with stiff backs. Then the Z-boys appear from nowhere, hitting the deck with slides and skids and jumps, screeching round the park as close to the ground as they could with threadbare jeans and t-shirts that flapped in the wind. Skateboarding was suddenly exciting. No longer were the stars made up of people who could stand-up straight, they were those who took risks and flooded the competition with unpredictability. The Z-boys were pioneers, and despite the dejected looks from the skate-stars of the day, the crowd had now been subjected to the future of skating.

I couldn't help picturing Michael McIntyre in a tight white vest after that, much to the horror of my own sub-conscience.

You can see where I got my inspiration for the website design from. I genuinely believe improv is a new punk-rock. We are doing comedy our way, the way we believe it should be done. We do improv because it is exciting, new, ever-changing and not tied down by existing conventions. It worked for stand-up comedians twenty-five years ago, and now look.

We will do this whether we get an audience or whether we don't; but do you remember the names of the politicians that tried to get The Sex Pistols removed from the country, or do you know The Pistols as one of the most iconic bands in music history? Improvisers are passionate people who are doing good stuff. I take solace in believing that once it kicks off, impro will forever be a leviathan on the British comedy timeline. I know where I want to be when that happens.

God save the Queen.

Slow and Tight

So Fast and Loose happened. Impro is finally back on mainstream TV, at least for 8 weeks anyway. We had an impro-watching party around the main event, watched some made-up-on-the-spot telly such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and Reno 911, and we watched some YouTube clips of brilliant groups like Beer.Shark.Mice and the amazing Upright Citizens Brigade (video below). which were all magnificent, but by far the central reason for our evening was Fast & Loose.

There has not been a mainstream British impro TV show since Whose Line Is It Anyway? about 15 years ago, so the expectations amongst the impro community could be felt like a build up of silence before a tidal wave hits...

So did the wave hit with the full force of a 15-year surge and a burgeoning contemporary impro scene? Well, um,... -ish... sort of like... sort of.

The twitterverse was lit with swathes of commentators. I would say it was mostly positive. Interestingly, the good complimentary stuff seemed to come from the 'normal' TV viewer. Lots of people thought it was hilarious. That is great. The dissenters, however, appeared to be people from within the improv community. There was a noticeable voice from improvisers all over the country that was disappointed and unsatisfied.

I am mixed. I thought the show was okay, but felt very calculated and safe. One if the most joyous aspects of doing impro is that the audience call out suggestions. This does two things:

1. proves that it's improvised.

2. gives the improvisers completely bat-shit crazy unexpected suggestions to work with.
There was no audience interaction whatsoever on Fast & Loose. Why the hell not? They managed it 15 years ago with Whose Line? so why take a backwards step now?

The cast list included Pippa Evans and Humphrey Ker. These are two perfectly decent improvisers who could cope with any suggestion the audience could muster. Future cast members for the series include Ruth Bratt and Dave Reed, who are also off-the-cuff masters. The Fast & Loose decision-makers are happy to use less-well-known but entirely capable improvisers, but it appears that due to some wet fear of risk-taking they also had to go down the danger-free route of stand-up comedians and a fail-safe format. The name of the show ended up being quite the opposite of the truth.

My lady-cohort observed that if you wanted to broadcast a show about mime, you would go and talk to some mime artists; find out if there was a community of people who do mime and which performers those mime artists respect most. You would work with those maestros to form the best mime format you could for your TV show and the best mimists for your cast.

Why then, didn't Fast & Loose work more with prominent people in the improvisation circuit? There are people out there who've practiced incessantly on the art of improv for years and years and are regarded as figureheads in the community. Dylan Emery is one of the creators of Showstoppers, performs in Grand Theft Impro, runs the Crunchy Frog Collective, part of the astounding School of Night and is well regarded as a bit of a powerhouse in making existing improvisers work harder and be better since he took up the mantel that Alan Marriott left behind when he moved back home to Canada.
Steve Roe almost single-handedly runs Hoopla! and you won't find anyone battling harder to get improv out of dingy pub cellars and into the public eye. He is also a brilliant improviser himself.
Katy Schutte is just about one of the best improvisers I've ever worked with and imparts the knowledge she has gained from training in (impro-Mecca) Chicago to our little island.

Any one of these people could have given Fast & Loose a list of incredible, reliable, hilarious improvisers (including themselves) who would have astounded the audience. They'd have had some pretty brilliant ideas about show formats too, that certainly wouldn't have felt as stale as F&L did for a lot of it. These are people that trust in the abilities of fellow improvisers, and prove it by performing in front of real-life audiences with them. 'Them' includes me, and I'm a long way away from the best improviser in town.

When you perform live you don't even get to edit out the poorer bits in post-production like they can with TV. If F&L producers were scared of going the whole hog and committing to impro, why didn't they learn from the success of Whose Line.. and allow the performers to fly?

Fast & Loose just didn't seem to stray that far from the sterile safety we see in Mock the Week; a show that willfully gives the impression it is impro, but is not even close:
Exhibit A It doesn't really have improvisers in it.
Exhibit B It is mostly made up of stand-up comedians.
Exhibit C Everything just looks, well.. rehearsed.

hmm.

Wow. that's all pretty negative. There are positive things that came out of the Fast & Loose series debut. For a start, with the above list of evidence you can now delete Exhibit A.
F&L did actually have improvisers in it... It's a start.

Also, there were some bits that were actually impro. The dinner scene was a TV evilution of a 'Scene Replay' impro game, albeit rushed through.

The sideways floor thingy near the end was pretty much a classic 'Genre Swap' but with an added aspect you can't easily do live on stage in a room above a pub, with no budget because it's hard to get a decent-sized audience because no-one knows about improv because TV execs have been too scared to put it on TV even though everyone EVERYONE liked a show that was on 15 years ago. That game worked really well and the twitterverse was almost unanimous in it's appreciation.

So, I guess in summary; it was frustrating for improvisers or impro-fans who've seen just how good impro can be; and what can possibly be achieved live on stage. Those who have seen entire musicals and shakespearian style plays created in a moment, those who have been whisked along an intricate weave of intertwining storylines and characters, those who have seen skilled actors work together to create miraculous and hilarious things on stage... will have been rather underwhelmed.

But for anyone who doesn't know about improv and hasn't been exposed to it, well, it may have opened their eyes to a whole new form of performance that isn't the standard vanilla 'much-repeated one man stand-up routine with the same jokes coming up time and time again but with slightly different delivery'. Which can only be a good thing. It's a tentative toe-dip in an improv pool that can only be improved by a braver jump into the shallow end. And then a doggy paddle.

For impro virgins with a whetted appetite, there's so much to discover (shortform, longform, musicals, theatresports, impro soaps, harolds). If you want to discover more, don't limit yourself to a TV show that's controlled by TV executives, seek out the good stuff:

in London:
hoopla!
showstoppers
music box
8bit
grand theft impro
school of night
horse aquarium

in Brighton:
the maydays
the noise next door

anywhere else:
start from the London Improv website, and work outwards.

and then demand that TV execs allow this kind of thing to happen:


If you would like email updates, send a message to LondonImprov@gmail.co.uk saying so.