What makes people laugh? I believe it can be boiled down to an equation:
Surprise + Believability = Laughter.
The most obvious answer is Surprise. “I didn’t see that coming! Who ever thought he’d do that? Woah! Can you believe that’s how it went down?!” We laugh when we are caught off-guard, our anticipations subverted or paid off in an unexpected way.
Read MoreI flew to Tel Aviv and Berlin last month. I taught improv in these cites to pay for the trip, but the experience was all about dancing. I danced harder than ever in my life in these magical cities. And I had great sex with the most beautiful people.
Sex and dancing is what this story is about.
Read MoreOh, do not worry!” Sofia, the owner of the hotel said, as my friend Aaron and I stepped into her elevator without a door. I reached out and skimmed the interior facade of the building with my hands as we rode upwards. Aaron joked out loud that this elevator would never fly for American hotel safety standards. “Never!” Sofia agreed, throwing us a devilish smile.
Read MoreIt was the morning of an improv gig I had booked in Oberlin, Ohio with my show Happy Karaoke Fun Time. I did what I do when I’m traveling, which is to log into Grindr as soon as we arrived. A man named Ben messaged me. Ben was a stocky, muscular guy whose photo looked the part of a corn-fed farmer bro from the great Midwest (I found out later he was a graphic designer living with his mom). We started chatting, and he was interested in meeting up for a hook-up on my one night in town. We traded pics; I liked what I saw, though he only sent one out-of-focus face pic of himself in a foggy bathroom mirror. I could have pressed for more photos, but I wasn’t being too picky. I was on the road, and I was horny.
He asked why I was in town. I mentioned my improv gig, to which he responded, “Oh, well, I’m hilarious in my downtime.” This seemed a very unfunny statement to me, but I wrote back, “Nice.”
He replied, “Ha yep. We will jive pretty good then.”
Read MoreIt was a bright, cold morning in March, 2011 in Chicago. I had just had the best improv audition of my life at The Second City. I skipped, high on life, back to my 1992 BMW 525i car in the perfect parking spot I’d found right outside the theater. I started the engine, and the radiator exploded in a cloud of fumes and acrid smoke. It ballooned outward from the front of the car. A jogger ran right into the cloud. She coughed and stumbled to the driver side window. She started screaming at me for poisoning her lungs. She threatened to sue me. I shouted back, “It’s my car, not me!” She flipped me the middle finger and jogged away.
The car was totally dead. And, as it seems to happen in my life, I’d gone from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows in a split second.
Read MoreWhen I have nothing to do, I encounter The Nothing.
You may remember it from the film The Neverending Story. It is the embodiment of annihilation, portrayed as a menacing black wolf.
It terrified me in nightmares as a child. As an adult, I experience it in my waking hours, whenever I am waiting, or listless, or have no plans.
It is my fear of insignificance. My fear of being forgotten. Of having missed my moment or the right turn to realize a dream.
Read MoreI sat there, palms sweating, trying to hex the basket of name slips in my favor. “Call my name next,” I channeled, psychically trying to force my name to be called.
Read MoreThis is an essay about performing improv:
The metaphor I want to suggest is that your improvised character is a wheel, with the center of that wheel being the first thing you say or do as your character, and the spokes being the context of the scene.
Read MoreRead this article on Medium.com
The first thing I do when I teach improv classes is ask the group to get into a circle.
I count how long it takes them. The average for a group of 16 students is about ten seconds. The quality of the group’s movement is lethargic, meandering, hesitant and a bit dismissive of the need to make a circle in the first place. Why do we have to do this…aren’t we adults?
Read MoreRead this story on Medium.com so you can see all the pretty pictures in it!
I don’t like magical thinking. I don’t like getting my hopes up for something that isn’t feasible or attainable. I value action steps. I believe in possibility but don’t like wishing on a star. I want to wish on a business plan. You can blame this on me being a Capricorn at heart, though my astrological chart is complicated.
But there’s one place in the world where I suspend my disbelief and buy into everything I’m promised: Korean spas. I go crazy for Korean spas.
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