Improv Comedy (Live and Otherwise) Examined on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #20

What role does improv com­e­dy play in pop­u­lar cul­ture? It shows up in the work of cer­tain film direc­tors (like Christo­pher Guest, Adam McK­ay, and Robert Alt­man) and has sur­faced in some of the TV work of Lar­ry David, Robin Williams, et al. But only in the rare case of a show like Whose Line Is It Any­way? is the pres­ence of impro­vi­sa­tion obvi­ous. So is this art form doomed to live on the fringes of enter­tain­ment? Is it maybe of more appar­ent ben­e­fit to its prac­ti­tion­ers than to audi­ences?

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an are joined by Tim Snif­f­en, announc­er on the pop­u­lar Hel­lo From the Mag­ic Tav­ern pod­cast, and a mem­ber of the Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny and Baby Wants Can­dy (impro­vised musi­cals). He’s also writ­ten for Live From Here and oth­er things. We dis­cuss dif­fer­ent types of improv, a bit of the his­to­ry and struc­ture of Sec­ond City, improv’s alleged self-help ben­e­fits, how impro­vi­sa­tion relates to reg­u­lar act­ing, writ­ing, pod­cast­ing, and oth­er arts, and more.

Here are a few improv pro­duc­tions to check out:

• ASSSCAT, a recur­ring show by the Upright Cit­i­zens Brigade (Amy Poehler’s start)
• This Impro­vised Shake­speare Com­pa­ny per­for­mance includes Thomas Mid­dled­itch of Sil­i­con Val­ley
• Paul Provenza’s Set List (this one fea­tures Robin Williams)
• Baby Wants Can­dy includ­ing Tim per­form­ing a satire of Mary Pop­pins
• Off Book, The Impro­vised Musi­cal pod­cast
• More improv TV shows (Drew Carey seems to be involved with half of these.), and even more on this Red­dit thread
• “Top 20 Impro­vised Movie Moments” from WatchMojo.com
• The long-run­ning (and just now end­ing) Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast
• Of the hun­dreds of Hel­lo from The Mag­ic Tav­ern episodes, you may want to try #3 as an intro­duc­tion and then #10 where Tim real­ly gets to shine
• Here are more improv pod­casts; Paul F. Tomp­kins has prob­a­bly been a guest on all of them. Though real­ly, aren’t near­ly all pod­casts (and real­i­ty TV shows, for that mat­ter) improv? There are sev­er­al oth­er lists of best improv pod­casts you can eas­i­ly find with a quick web search.
• There are also some pod­casts about tech­niques of improv, for exam­ple the Improv Resource Cen­ter Pod­cast with Kevin Mul­laney
• And don’t for­get role-play­ing games and their asso­ci­at­ed pod­casts and YouTube streams; those are def­i­nite­ly improv of some sort, and occa­sion­al­ly done by pro­fes­sion­al actors or come­di­ans, as in Crit­i­cal Role and Har­mon­Quest.

For fur­ther read­ing, check out:

• Some­thing Won­der­ful Right Away by Jef­frey Sweet (2004)
• “What Exact­ly Is Improv in the Film­mak­ing Process?” by Lau­ren McGrail
• “The Phi­los­o­phy Behind The Inspired Silli­ness Of ‘Anchor­man,’ 10 Years Lat­er” by Lau­ren Duca
• “Philadel­phia The­atre Com­pa­ny hosts ‘Improv Is the Future of The­ater’ pan­el dis­cus­sion: Impro­vis­ing an improv econ­o­my” by Judy Weight­man
• “Apply­ing Improv Tech­niques to Threat Intel­li­gence” by David Pedu­to

For musi­cal improv, try Naked­ly Exam­ined Music #30 with Paul Wer­ti­co and David Cain, and also #55 with Don Pre­ston (Zappa’s key­boardist) whom Mark quot­ed in this dis­cus­sion.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.