A Quote by Jason Mantzoukas
Maybe it's just my improv and sketch background, but I'm a lot more comfortable in a group. I like sharing focus and populating an ensemble.
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Many of the people I've worked with over the years came from a sketch-comedy background or an improv background, and I've learned a lot from them.
There was a male sketch group in my college. I was like why isn't there a female sketch group? So then I started doing sketch comedy and all that stuff. It just happened.
At this point, I feel fairly comfortable in terms of performance. I think having a sketch background actually helps a lot. Because my background is acting, and stand-up, in a lot of ways, is acting.
I think, coming from an improv/sketch background, I'm just used to having people around me to feed off of and support.
We come from a live background of sketch improv and standup.
Just watching people who come from a stand-up background is different from watching people who come from an improv or sketch background.
A great love is a lot like a good memory. When it's there, and you know it's there, but its just out of your reach, it can be all that you think about. And you can focus on it, and try to force it. But the more that you do, the more you seem to push it away. But if you're patient, and hold still...Maybe. Just maybe, it'll come to you.
The pieces of "Please Give" just did fit together. I'm very comfortable with the ensemble. I thought this was just going to be a movie about this girl who gives mammograms. She's the lead. And then before I know it, she's got a sister, neighbors, and sometimes parents and friends and then it's an ensemble. And that's what I'm comfortable with, I guess.
When I graduated, I was director of my school's sketch comedy group, and I knew that I wanted to be writing and performing my own sketch comedy. It kind of made me want to do my own one-person sketch group.
I have friends who will say, "Oh you gotta come and see our show." And the first thing I say is, "Is it sketch or improv?" I'll go in a minute to see a sketch show. I love sketch; it's my favorite form. But if it's all improv, they're either very good and it's annoying how good they are and it makes you feel bad, or they're not too good then you're sweating for them. And you don't want to sweat for them, see actors repeating each other's lines.
If you are in an improv jazz ensemble or a small chamber group, you learn to think fast on your feet and how to be flexible and to collaborate and compromise, and that may yield a creative outcome.
There's different kinds of improv. There's Second City improv where you try to slowly build a nice sketch. There's stuff you do in college coffee houses where you just go joke, joke, joke. Bring another funny character with a funny hat on his head. Christopher Guest is more the line of trying to get a story out.
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 feel like most standup comedians do it the way I did it, where you just go to open mics and cut your teeth. Sketch and improv - they take a lot of classes. It's not unusual, the way I did it. It's just that, with standup, no one knows how to start because there's no book for it; there's no place you can really go.
We started off in improv and sketch comedy, and with improv the most important thing is to listen and make sure you're not stepping over someone, so we've been trained for such a long time doing that.
If you're looking at the array of performers, there's just a lot of people that it's about getting closer to them. That's not really our focus. It's funny, with the kids' stuff, we really sell ourselves as the MC, but it's much more like we're Ed Sullivan than we're like Sting. We're just the presenters. And that's an idea that we're very comfortable with.
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