A Quote by Hannibal Buress

I took an improv class in 2005 in Chicago at ComedySportz, which was short-form, more of a games-based improv. I remember it being real fun and helping with my stand-up. If I did an improv class, and then I did stand-up later, I felt looser on stage and more comfortable.
I had a teacher who recommended I take improv classes in Chicago - I'm from Evanston, Illinois - so I did improv classes at Improv Olympic, and that kind of opened me up.
When I started stand-up, the first thing I did was to take an improv class.
When I moved to New York at 22, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I took an improv class, and the first scene I did, I felt like 'I want to do this for the rest of my life.' It was the first time I ever felt like that about anything. I tried to make a living off improv.
Improv requires your audience to be informed about what improv is. With stand-up, anybody can sit down and watch stand-up and laugh at jokes.
In 2002, I was taking an improv class because, as a white male with glasses who was born between 1978 and 1994, it's legally required that I take at least one improv class in my life.
If there's one regret I have of my time in comedy it's that I really I was so obsessed with improv for so many years and I exclusively did improv for the first 6 years or 7 years. I was doing comedy and then I started doing solo work and stand up, a bit of writing, making videos, and really going into it on that end.
Improv seemed to replace stand-up, which was very big before that. Stand-up comedy was real hot in the late '80s and through the '90s.
I had no real direction at all in my 20's and so I did what a lot of people without direction do: I took an acting class. In one of those first days of the class, I did this weird, silly improv, and it got laughs. It was such a blissful moment. I've never gotten over that love of hearing laughter. As a people pleaser, it's the drug of choice for me.
I was on the improv team in high school, and after I graduated, I joined an improv company that had been established 10 years prior to me getting there. They did longform improv, and I fell in love with it. It's acting, character creation, collaborative, artistic expression and comedy - and it's scary. It was a big rush.
I did stand up first in high school, joined an improv group in college, kept doing stand up after that, no one could deter me. And I have no other skills really, so I'm sorta stuck with this now. It's a little late to switch over to an ornithologist.
I took an improv class, and after my first class, I was like, 'Oh, I just want to do something like this. This is super fun.'
My rule of thumb is to always do what's on the page first. Then you can talk to your director about playing with it. Improv frees me up in a character, but I would be mortified if the writers who agonized over their words assumed I thought my improv was more valuable.
The thing that's frustrating about improv is that even if you have the best show in the world, it's over when it's over. You get to build stand-up - I really like that aspect of it. I like writing jokes, and you don't get to do that in improv.
I can rap. Not openly in the world, but it's important that people know! I can rap for a very specific reason, which is that in college I was in an improv comedy group, and we did musical improv.
I think, in a way, the stand-up prepped me for the improv, because I do a lot of riffing in my stand-up.
I'm convinced to do improv. All you have to do is listen to what people are saying to you, and then just add more information to what they've just said. That's all there is to improv, but it's the hardest thing to do.
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