Creating a Comic

The NY Times has an interesting story about the New York comedy scene:

Over the years, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater in Chelsea has earned a reputation as a kind of mint where comedy stars are coined: in go aspiring actors, writers and ex-medical students, out come new performers and writers for “Saturday Night Live,” “The Daily Show” and “30 Rock.”

The focus of the story, and of a lot of these comics, is on improv — short for improvisational comedy. Improv is an interesting kind of comedy magic, focusing largely on the performance aspect of the art. There’s a lot of overlap with the writing-based comedy skill set, but its definitely a different set of funny muscles.

I’ve never done any improv, myself, but I’m interested in giving it a try sometime to broaden my horizons.

The NYT also has a fun slideshow accompanying the piece, with some great quotes from the comics.

 — Posted by CJ under Around the Internet. Please comment or trackback!