My fingers hurt, just from writing the words: Wacky! Zany! Ker-a-zy! To most comedians, they are like garlic, or crucifixes, or crucifixes made of garlic…on fire: they stink, hurt and are devoid of real significance (not in that order).
I am an improviser. I do improvised comedy. But I very, very rarely go to improv. There is far too great a likelihood of the occurrence of those 3 words; lots of shrieking and leaping and being outrageous(!) as executed by small children (of about 23) who can’t write anything without emoticons and thousands of exclamation marks, and dress like pirates in real life
Too often, improv is advertised as Explosive! Mental! Without a safety net! I’ve been doing it for over 10 years, and I promise you, I’ve never needed a net or any other kind of saftey-gear. Not even an elbow-pad. In my experience, it can be done without flames or knives or being up high. In fact, it’s usually better that way.
Which is why I’m lucky I’ve managed to get a brilliant group together to collectively be the London Comedy Improv. We’ve all been at this lark a long, long time; every scene carries with it a kind of weight of bitterness and regret. We don’t know what the next scenario will be, or who’ll be in it, or what we’re going to say, but we know that the other people on stage will calmly (if curmudgeonly-ly) back us up. Watching Michael Legge and John Voce together is a treat. Rufus Hound could do the show on his own, but is even more amazing when he’s dealing with someone else’s rug-pull. Last night’s special guest, Ewen MacIntosh, said he was rusty and didn’t bring any of his friends in case he didn’t do as well as he’d like. Pah. He soon proved himself very, very wrong, and I’ll bet he wished his friends were there to see how brilliant he was. That’ll teach the modest fecker.
Brendan Dempsey and Michelle Read are two of the best improvisers I know, and showed me how it was done 10 years ago; now, we’ve got a kind of improv telepathy that only comes with playing together loads: there’s no need for shrieking – we can do it with our minds. This is the kind of improv I love. Calm, assured, funny – yes – but with no sign of those 3 awful, awful words. In a way, it’s more hilarious because you know we’re shrieking inside.
Running the NYC marathon for the Alzheimer’s Society on Nov 1. Please sponsor me here if you like.
