r/improv • u/TheMickeyMoo • Mar 29 '26
Discussion Yes, Improv Comedy Sucks. And Everyone Should Try It.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/magazine/yes-improv-comedy-sucks-and-everyone-should-try-it.html17
u/TheMickeyMoo Mar 29 '26
Behind the paywall:
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u/charlies-ghost Mar 29 '26
I am so grateful there are still writers in this world who know how to sling highly literate, yet breezy prose.
Kudos to the author. You got pretty words.
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u/rampagenumbers Mar 29 '26
The article is quite different from the headline, and this has been making the rounds for a week (my dad even sent it to me!), and is a case where the editors who title NYT articles tend to be different than the people who write op-eds. Still the dumb facile unfunny dig at improv that people have made forever. Even if true that half of all improv is lousy, the same is true of standup and many other performing arts. If I go to a comedy club here in NYC, “seasoned veterans” often do a show with a couple laughs and a lot of bad, often gross and stupid bad take stuff for which one pays a $40 cover and two-drink minimum. Yet you’ll never see a “we all know standup sucks, right?” take in the Times.
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u/AdirondackMike Mar 29 '26
Most of almost anything you experience where people are still learning it, is kind of rough to be part of. An amateur baseball game is tough to get through, an amateur stand-up comic is painful to watch, amateur art is mind-numbing, amateur food is a bummer. It's just that people don't witness others trying stuff out, typically. I mean, somebody who has become a great woodworker once built a birdhouse that looked like dog shit. We just never saw the dog shit birdhouse. So, basically, I'm saying that improv is mostly dog shit birdhouses. But if you can just accept that you're watching a process, it can be fun and every once in awhile you see a super cool birdhouse.
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u/loftrain16 Mar 30 '26
The obsession in this sub with how "cool" improv is to the rest of the world makes me feel like I'm in high school
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u/Careful_Leader_5829 Longform Mar 29 '26
I'm very frustrated right now, because as much as I love improv, getting involved has also brought a lot of toxicity into my life that I never figured out how to cope with.
I've made friends from improv, but I've also been traumatized, and so I tend to stay away from improv theaters unless the owners are highly involved and involved in the community.
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u/polaroidfades Mar 29 '26
Toxicity? In what way? I’ve just started my improv journey and am curious!
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u/HOUS2000IAN Mar 29 '26
When you’re in an improv group, as with any group of people, things can go sideways, sometimes because of poor communication, or changing expectations, or any of the everyday very human behaviors… Groups come and go. The first time your group dissolves it can be a real gut punch. But just wish everyone well and move on…
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u/johnnyslick Seattle Mar 29 '26
It 100% doesn’t have to be that way and IME the more involved owners aren’t necessarily a fix for this. Annoyance under Mick Napier, who is heavily involved, is great and inclusive and at least IME tries hard to not traumatize its students. IO under Charna, who was heavily involved, was a shitshow towards the end. I’m in a new city and the biggest school here just switched out leadership and the new person appears to be working a lot harder to provide accountability than the old person did (I get the very distinct impression that the old approach was very “old school” and sink-or-swim and not even in the good “I’m going to let you navigate your way out of this rut you put yourself into” sink-or-swim), but there are certainly still bad apples here and yes, they still potentially spoil the whole bunch.
I’ve been doing this for long enough that I can pick out the good from the bad and I know that improv itself is by its nature fun and doesn’t have to cause trauma. I’m really really sad that not everyone has this experience.
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u/Careful_Leader_5829 Longform Mar 29 '26
yeah but Charna being involved actually meant that everyone could blame the owner when things went to shit. that's what I mean. that is still accountability.
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u/johnnyslick Seattle Mar 29 '26
It didn't get better though and at the end of the day when BIPOC actors wanted a larger say she responded by shutting the place down. How is that accountability? I'd say that if anything the current corporate owners are more receptive to shutting down gross That Guys because they risk lawsuits / bad publicity whereas Charna would just be like "suck it up, snowflakes".
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u/MasterPlatypus2483 Mar 29 '26 edited Mar 29 '26
I started doing stand-up comedy before improv at age 18 in the early 2000s with like any young boy my age delusions of grandeur of becoming famous. Even as I got older I would continually get “good for you! I could never do that!” whenever I told someone I just met that I did comedy/comedy stuff. Fast forward to 2026, now adding improv to my resume and every person instead of that now says to me “oh I’ve tried stand-up” or “I tried improv” at least once, and you get famous on TikTok if you fart for five seconds and it’s suddenly not unique to be famous anymore or do comedy/improv anymore and not something I desire.
With that being said, I think everyone should at least take a one-off improv drop-in class at least once in their life just as a bucket list thing, fun activity in their city to do.
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u/CartographerOk3306 Mar 29 '26
Both communities keep comparing one to another and the reality is that as performers they serve different purposes in different ways.
Improv is a group activity with group think and they have techniques, games, structure and an understanding (hopefully) that their efforts serve the scene starting with a suggestion rather than an individual starting with nothing(however preprov and old go to’s exist). And before you say that there are individual improv performances, the group think mention was to include the audience with easily accessible and understandable scenes to follow so that they can be more immersed in space work and follow the game of the scene.
Stand up serves the individual and is often a subversion of expectations to create interest faster and more often than improv. Also a stand up has only the one persona, and while they may do impressions or tell stories they are still themselves during that show. They also rehearse and layout their sets for months or years and typically build their following by having jokes that an audience will come and see over and over again. *Hot pocket.
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u/mtrsp Mar 30 '26
As an improv teacher my reaction to the article is “a 101 student missed three classes in a row, then showed up again?” 😬
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u/SJGM Mar 29 '26
Improv is quite good at being Improv, but once it starts to try being ordinary theatre it shows its weaknesses. Having tried Devising a lot to create scripts through improvisation it's pretty clear how the devised segments can't ever shake the feeling of being a bit off.
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u/headmasterritual Mar 30 '26
Nope.
I’ve seen world-moving, profound, paradigm shifting pieces of devised theatre that changed the way I view performance. Robert Lepage’s The Seven Streams of the River Ota, Crystal Pite and Jonathon Young’s Betroffenheit, so much more.
I’ve taught rigorous devising for decades. It is completely possible to have rigor and methodology and process.
I’ve seen genre-based longform improv with a narrative that soared and while there was plenty of laughter, it was greater than the sum of its parts and left you with something to take away.
I have trained with improv ensembles with rigor (there’s that word again) where we researched and practiced dramaturgy and were thoroughly familiar with forms and could step out on a stage and trust that our shared vocabulary would find and define a genre-based narrative with both major and minor plot points.
I’m genuinely, sincerely sorry that you haven’t had my experiences. I hope that one day you do.
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u/deeceeo Mar 29 '26
I don't get this weird improv hatred zeitgeist. Some of it sucks, yeah, but the good improv is the hardest I've ever laughed in my life.