Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the SoCap
Improv Comedy Podcast. My name is Ralph. I'm
the owner and artistic director of the SoCap
Improv Comedy Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. We
are located at 154 Danforth Avenue, above the
Black Swan Tavern, around the second and third
floor. We have improv classes, improv shows,
corporate events. You can rent our space and
do your own thing. It's a fun place to hang out
in a world that is increasingly becoming lonelier
and lonelier. It's a good place to come and form
bonds and relationships with people. Anyway,
this is a podcast about improv. and improv for
the stage. But more specifically, or at least
as much, I try to gear these discussions towards
people who are not performers. So people who
come and have an interest in improv or want to
know, oh, hey, Ralph, I'm a person who does blank.
Why would I want to take an improv class? I don't
understand. I don't want to be TFA or Lauren
Ash or some of these other great improvisers
turned actors. That's a fair question. So that's
what this podcast talks about. Every podcast
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Pontius Pilates, and go and get in some work.
I've never taken a Pilates class. I take yoga.
I participate in a yoga class now once a week,
and it's great. It targets all the parts of my
body that I want to ignore. Not ignore. That
I don't want to work out so much. So it's great
for me. It's great for core, my legs, strength,
balance. It's great. So I recommend yoga to everybody
out there. At least try it. And that's just a
recommendation. Here's the thing. When I recommend
something, I'm not saying you need to do it.
I'm thinking, is this information? You can take
it or not take it. It doesn't matter to me. You
know you. Anyway, I have to say that because
sometimes people get mad at me because I don't
say often enough that this is not direction or
advice. It's just information. Anyway, I love
yoga. Check it out. Or don't. Anyway, today what
I want to talk about because it comes up quite
a bit. It's come up a bit late often lately is,
uh, why do we laugh? What's, what is that about?
The laughter that comes improv on stage or, um,
the spontaneous kind of laughter that happens
when you're hanging out with really good friends.
Um, cause if you pay attention, if you are an
improviser and you're in class or you're, you're
in a show more than a class. specifically, there's
a lot of laughter. And then when you stop, you
say, well, why was this thing funny? Most people
don't know. Or they don't have an answer. And,
you know, I think we all kind of assume that
we laugh at things that are funny. Well, what's
funny? And that's a whole other discussion. But
when we laugh in improv, the laughter that happens
in improv is, especially the belly laughs, are...
much less about saying funny things and more
about bonding and communicating and finding your
group, your tribe. That's, that's, that's why,
that's where a lot of the laughter comes from.
Um, and, uh, so for example, you know, there's
this exercise, the word of a time game where
you will have two people, uh, and they will take
turns saying the next word in the sentence. So
character A might say one, character B, day,
character A. There, character B was a giant monster.
Whatever. And that's often very funny when you
watch people do it. There's a lot of laughter.
But you get more laughter when the sentence makes
grammatical sense. When it is a sentence that...
Everybody recognizes as a sentence. It can be
somewhat ludicrous in the answer, and often these
answers are. But the more that sentence is something
that we recognize as a sentence, and I know what's
going on, I will laugh. That will get much more
laughter than a sentence that is disjointed,
that isn't a real sentence, or that doesn't make
a lot of sense. This one happened. This is a
typical one that will happen. Two characters,
two individuals, not characters. They're playing
one character. They're two individuals. And they're
trying to say a sentence. And this happened a
couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago, in one of
my classes for beginners. And they were asked
what they were doing. And they responded, I am
walking my. And the person. who had the next
word the word dog was halfway out of their mouth
and they stopped and they said fish i am walking
my fish and nobody laughed and everybody just
kind of stood around and looked at them instead
of laughing and i stopped and i said why didn't
you say dog and they were well it wasn't it was
too obvious it seemed it's got to be better than
that And that's not true. If a dead dog, we would
have laughed. The thing is with the saying, I'm
walking my fish, the audience or the people watching
this, or if you're not on stage and you're with
a group of people at a gathering or something,
and that happens and you say fish or something
that is quote unquote weird. When I say weird,
what I mean is something that I don't see in
my regular life. And I can't relate to walking
a fish. You know, I have an image in my head
of a fish with a leash on it. The fish is in
like an aquarium and the person's walking around.
And it's not to say that that cannot be funny,
but it's not funny in that context. And for me,
what happens is it's just odd. And the audience
or the people watching this who are participating
in it as a, as spectators, they'll laugh. And
to me, what happens is when you walk a fish,
they get a little panicky because they think
maybe I'm missing something. Maybe this isn't
for me. And they pull back and they don't laugh
because it's not for them. It's like telling,
It's like hearing the punchline of a joke and
not getting it. And everybody else is laughing.
You're the only one not laughing. You'd feel
very, well, first of all, you'd probably fake
the laugh and say, oh, good one. Yeah, I love
that joke. I'm going to steal it. And you try
to bluff your way into being accepted. But if
you didn't get it, you would not like that joke.
And you would get out as fast as possible, like
get out of that place. And this is the same thing
that happens on stage. And the tendency. Among
newer improvisers. And even people who have been
doing it for a long time. Is to be funny. I want
to be funny. And what they think. What people
think is going to be funny. Is not. Because it's
just odd. I'm going to walk my fish. It's just
an odd statement. And without having context.
For why that makes sense. Or where that sentence
came from. Like if we had prior to that. a discussion
about walking things you know walking inanimate
objects or walking animals you can't walk like
a dinosaur or walking a cow oh walk a fish okay
that that might be funny because we understand
what we're talking about right we we all understand
what's going on in the game underneath this the
subtextual conversation um right so why do we
laugh well we laugh In this case, if that person
said dog, we would have laughed because we'd
all see it coming. And I'm expecting dog and
they say dog. And then I just laughed because
ha ha ha. I knew what was going on. I belong.
I'm part of this. This is great. I feel good.
That laughter is a release of the tension that
happens when maybe I'm not going to be part of
this group. So one of the reasons that. to me
anyway, that word of time works so well, is every
time you start, there is a possibility that for
an audience member or someone watching this,
they're going to lose the track of the conversation.
This might be a time that they're the only ones
that don't understand what's going on. And so
when the sentence ends and they get it, oh, it's
the release of the tension again and the laughter
comes. Because once you start doing that, there's
a bit of dissonance because we don't know where
it's going, we don't know what the sentence is
going to be, what's happening. And as it starts
to coalesce and we've had our period of divergence
while we're beginning the sentence and now we're
converging towards the goal and we all see that
goal coming and we all arrive at the same point
at the same time, we laugh at how wonderful it
is. There's another exercise that I warm up almost
all my classes with, which is the game called
I Am A, which involves three people one at a
time. And we make patterns or images or games
or, well, there's different rules for how the
three things are related. So one person starts
and they say, for example, I am a plane. Actually,
let me try another one. The first person walks
out and says, I'm a C. And second character walks
out or person walks out and says, I'm B. So that
B contextualizes the first C as the letter C.
The second character participant could have walked
out and said, I am an ocean. And then my C, the
first C would be S -E -A, not the letter C or
the... Second character walked out and said,
I am here. Or I am smell. Then we got, oh, that's
that first C is S -E -E. So the second person
contextualizes it. And then the third person
is supposed to follow that pattern. So if I'm
C and the second character is B, the third person,
the best choice is A. Or some other letter of
the alphabet. Not to come out all of a sudden
and say, I'm an ocean. Because if you had, I'm
a C, I'm a B. I'm the ocean. Again, that's not
going to be funny. No one's going to laugh at
that. They're going to go like, well, that's
odd. It's weird. I don't get it. I don't know
what's happening. They're not going to laugh.
Everybody's going to go up on their head. They're
going to panic a little bit, thinking they're
the only ones who don't have it. They're going
to be thinking hard about trying to make it all
make sense so they feel better about themselves.
But it's not going to work. But that's what the
tendency is for people to do. I can't say A because
that's too obvious. Say the obvious thing. because
that will be inclusive. That will include people.
They'll relate to it better. So why do we laugh?
We laugh because we know what's going on, because
we're a part of something. And I'm not going
to go into it today, but dissonance, the thing
that creates that imbalance or the panic that
is a relief is a big part of comedy. We need
to have, before you can have the release of tension,
you've got to build some tension. So it's the
release of tension. recognizing that you belong,
that you're part of this. And I just wanted to
finish because I lost my train of thought about
that game. I am a, so when the, when the more,
the more obvious you are in this game, the more
people will laugh. I had one just a couple of
days ago in the class. And I can't remember the
exact one, but it was a, it was a title. uh of
something like a very well -known like uh oh
yes like alice in wonderland say it was something
very similar to that so the first person that
went out was i'm alice the second person came
out and said wonderland and then two of us uh
very quickly ran in and both said in so we completed
the title and the whole place went crazy like
it was a huge laugh from everybody um Because
it was so relatable. And it was so like, I know
Alice in Wonderland. That's why it's funny. That's
why we laugh. It releases the tension. Because
we know we found our group, our people, our tribe.
I belong. I'm one of you. I'm in. I'm accepted.
That's why it's funny. And that's why we laugh.
That's a lot of the laughter, especially the
belly laughter that you get in scenes, in shows,
but also in the real world. You know, there's
this overwhelming... thrive a lot of us have
to be impressive to wow people another does is
it pushes people away the best way is to be relatable
you will get people to like you a lot better
that way anyway that's my thing for today why
we laugh uh i think it's really interesting and
and i encourage you to when you laugh or you
hear people laugh to figure out what that's about
anyway that's my time Have a great rest of the
week, everybody, and we'll see you back here
next time for more SOCAP Improv Comedy Podcast
brought to you by Pontius Pilates. That's right.
They'll nail you to the wall with their hardcore
workouts. Take care. Bye, everybody.