The Relationship Between Stand-Up Comedy and Improv Comedy
If you’re an improviser and you used to getting laughs on stage for your improv skills, you’ve probably had the following sentence said to you: “You should do stand-up comedy”.
“You should do stand-up.” It’s something many of us have heard and indeed there are performers who do improv, and stand-up and acting and musical theatre, and there are some that just do a couple of these or just maybe do one of these. The point is, just because you can get laughs out of a room by doing improv, that doesn’t automatically mean you’ll get the laughs when stood with a mic in your hand.
But why is this?
Why is it some improvisers feel so comfortable on stage doing improv but not doing stand-up? And is it the same the other way around? The answer to the latter question is yes. Some stand-ups hate the idea of doing improv. The reason some are comfortable with one and not the other is because they are very different skill sets.
If you do improv or stand-up and someone tells you you’d be great at the other skill, they may be right, but they may also be wrong. Being good at one doesn’t instantly mean you’d be able to do the other because each performance type exercises a different set of muscles in your skill set.
If people say they think you’d be good at the other skill it’s more likely than not that the person saying it to you is saying it because they think you’re funny and not saying it from the perspective of a performer. Even if they are a performer it may be that they see the potential in you to be funny and competent at the other skill.
So why are the differences and similarities between performing stand-up comedy and improv? Where do they overlap? And if you’re good at one but not the other does that mean you can never be good at both?
Different Psychology
A key difference between improv and stand-up is that there is a different psychology between the performer and the audience. Improv works because the audience know it’s improvised. The enjoyment comes from being impressed that people can make stuff up, from the enjoyment of seeing actors struggle, the feeling of the audience being in control, the audience’s fear of the unknown, from the shock/surprise factor of performers taking them in directions they didn’t expect and the aha moments of when they accurately predict what will come next.
Add to this that most of what I said happens on a subconscious level for the audience.
With stand up the audience go in expecting pretty much everything the performer says to be scripted. As such the audience hold it to higher scrutiny. Even if they don’t directly think of it this way, they will still be processing the thoughts of ‘why did you choose to say this idea at this time?’ If the ideas you present and the material you say doesn’t flow well or ideas don’t connect much or it doesn’t m shock/surprise as they’d hope it will be seen as of poorer quality or execution.
Add into this other aspects which can be crafted into stand-up like certain rhythms as alliteration, drops, twists, rule of three etc, and if these aren’t well presented the show may not be seen as good. Of course any or all of these can be incorporated into improv, but the advantage the stand-up comedian has is that they can take their time to develop their material. They can tweak and rewrite ideas and rehearse and rehearse the lines and delivery until it’s just right. With improv you can develop your imrpov muscle to use some of these same tools, but an off the cuff inclusion of them can never compete with something that has had time to be crafted perfectly.
Does that mean that stand-up is always better than improv? No, not at all, because the audience may find the off the cuff attempt to use these same comedic devices all the funnier and more exciting because at both the back and front of their minds they know you’re making it up on the spot. This is an advantage improv us over stand up.
There is a reason why a moment of audience interaction in a stand up show will often get a great reaction and that is because the audience know it’s not planned. Sceptical audience members may suspect a plant has been used to make something scripted seem in the moment, but these are infrequent in reality.
Being Stuck in Their Ways
Something I have come across with stand up comedians who are encouraged to do improv is that they go into improv with a sense of apprehension or fear. The safety blanket of their scripted material isn’t there to help them. On stage, the relationship to the audience is different as improv is mostly scene and character based work and stand up comics don’t get to look out as much (in theory) and feel the room in the same way.
Also improv being scene and character based means the performer has to use acting skills. Some people who do improv don’t view themselves as actors, but if they’re playing characters in scenes they are acting. Being labelled an improviser doesn’t have the same expectation attached as being called an actor, but to be the best improviser you can be you should seek to learn the skills of stagecraft that an actor would learn.
A stand-up comic may not have all the same skills that are required for acting on stage. The simplest example is that stand-up comics usually use a microphone as a tool on stage and don’t have to project their voice in the same way as an actor or improviser would.
By this same token people who act or just do improv may not have all the tricks up their sleeve of how to use the microphone as part of their performance. And there are many ways you can use a mic to aid your performance. It’s not just as simple as talking into it. The proximity you hold it from your face, the way you hold it, which hand up use, and how you can manipulate your voice when speaking into it are all skills that a stand-up comic will develop that an improviser probably doesn’t.
Speed of ideas
To speak about a difference between improvisers and stand-up comedians in a very generalised sense, improvisers are more likely to say the first thing that pops into their minds and throw everything at the wall to see what sticks where as stand-up comics will likely think longer about jokes to finesse and perfect ideas. The negative side of each is that an improviser will be wild and have a lot of misses in search of the hits whilst a stand-up comic may be stuck in their heads more.
Of course, one of the skills a stand-up has to develop is to think in their feet to respond to their audience and for many stand-up comics this may be a significant part of their style. My suspicion is that even if a stand-up does interact with the audience this will still be in a more controlled way where they lead the audience down a path they’re happy to go down and they are equipped with the tools to look for opportunities and latch onto them to make things appear more improvised than they perhaps are.
Improvisers frequently jump from A-Z whilst skipped many steps to get to an idea or joke. Certainly some improvisers, especially if they are experienced in long form improvisation have the skills to build things layer by layer, but I’ve also seen improv seems where performers are instantaneously performing as talking carrier bags and leaning into the absurd. Jumping straight into something like this may feel unearned to the stand-up comic who is used to warming a crowd into concepts and weaving ideas together in a longer journey.
If an improviser is tasked with creating a stand-up set they will probably find it a very different beast to handle. In improv you’ll almost always have another performer or team to bounce off of, where as a stand up has to craft their material so it flows from one idea to another without the input of others. It doesn’t mean it’s harder, it’s just different. You can just as easily write a version of the same joke to be said by one person or integrated into a conversation between two people. But if you’re not used to doing it one way or the other it will feel alien to you.
In Conclusion
So I guess we’ll come to answer the question of who has an easier time transitioning from one to the other? Is it the improviser attempting stand up? Or the stand up diving into improv?
I would imagine that a lot of improvisers, unless they are used to doing writing will find that part of the process challenging. They will have to learn to make notes and refine and edit ideas, and as mentioned the skill in making ideas work with just one person.
I think the challenges for the stand up comic will be in listening and giving themselves the freedom to respond in the moment to another improviser. There are a lot of skills in playing different character types, understanding genre, staging and stagecraft that are also needed to get the most out of your improv and some of these may come natural and some will need to be learned just as any improviser will also need to learn acting skills.
I think a stand-up comic will have the quicker route to learn the basics of improv and get to performing than vice versa, but that is partly down to the dive in and inclusive nature of improv having a easier entry point, but perhaps a higher learning curve. I say that because to be the best improviser in the world you would have to have a very wide knowledge base of performance skills, general knowledge and be completely present in the moment to make the most successful choices when faced with other performers who you cannot predict to truly be able to do anything thrown at you. If you are a stand up comic you only have to master your own material, which is obviously easier said than done.
I’m sure whoever reads this will see things they agree or disagree with depending whichever side of the fence they sit on. I believe that performers from both sides would benefit by working on their skill set of their less dominant skill. Learning the discipline of scripting yourself may teach you some things about how the inner workings of some jokes work which you may use but not have an understanding of. Learning improv for a stand-up may provide a new way to develop material and get you out your head.
You can get loads more Improv and comedy articles and videos in the improv and comedy section of the site, and don’t forget to check out the Extreme Improv XStreamed shows every week on the Extreme Improv XStreamed YouTube Channel
