A Quote by Paul F. Tompkins
What I love about improv so much is that we are all discovering it at roughly the same time. The performers are maybe, what, a half second ahead of the audience? There's very little lag time. I think of a thing, I say it, then the audience is laughing and it all happened in a second.
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The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.
I love creating characters that are ridiculous and flawed. To me, the most important thing about comedy is the joy it can bring to the performers and the audience alike. I love making people laugh and not over-thinking things. Some of my favorite moments are when I am doing an improv scene with friends, and I can't stop laughing during it.
I really subscribe to that old adage that you should never let the audience get ahead of you for a second. So if the film's abrasive and wrongfoots people then, y'know, that's great. But I hope it involves an audience.
Dark Horse was my second time working with Todd Solondz. I love him truly, very much. And I don't think he'd ever worked with an actor a second time. It was groundbreaking.
As of right this second my main focus is my new album, it'll be out probably towards the summertime, predominately R&B this time. I had a little stint with the dance music and all of that, which I had a good time with- and I love the audience, I love them for accepting me doing it -but I had to go home on this one. Had to take it back to my roots, and not to say that there won't be one, maybe two songs on there that the dance crowd can get into, but the majority, the girth of the album, will be R&B.
I don't come on to seduce the audience. I don't care if everyone laughs. I can't think about that anymore. If there's anything that a lot of experience on stage and a lot of stage time gives you is the confidence to know that it's ok if they're not laughing every second you're up there. Although that's what drives me and I still go too fast a lot of the time.
Sometimes improv doesn't work on TV because the audience had heard the thing that was shouted and they're very much alive, the audience in the room - they're alive in that moment. Whereas the audience sat at home on the sofa, it feels like it's part of a party that they haven't been invited to.
I've thought about bands or performers who appear from nowhere: You come out of the greenroom in this secure little unit, then you do this thing and you're shielded from everybody. I'm thinking of brilliant people, like Mariah Carey, who have no interaction. They interact with the audience at the time of the live thing but there's no build up and there's no afterward.
I think one of my favorite pieces I've ever done on the show which was about Hezbollah Israel conflict in 2006 and it was very pointed. It was a beautifully crafted piece of satire and it's a weird thing to say but it had a joke in there about 9/11 and I remember the audience sort of laughing but also kind of not knowing how to respond to that joke and it was just so - and I remember the tension after we did this joke on the air and there was this palpable gasp in the audience, but they were also laughing. And I thought oh, wow, that is something that is not being said in the Zeitgeist.
There's such a freewheeling nature to 'Second City,' and the greatest thing about 'Second City' was having a sophisticated audience night after night who appreciated what it was. They knew it wasn't all going to be great when you improvised, so they were very forgiving that way.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about what the audience would want. That's my job, is to anticipate ahead of the audience.
There's actually a disdain for the conversation about audience in the art world. Artist to artist, if you say, "What do you think about audience?" they would probably say, "I don't think about audience, I only think about my work," yet the audience is such an important part.
I say now, if I'm not laughing a whole lot on the first date, you're pretty much not going to get a second one, I can tell you that. It's all about the laughter and a good time for me.
I see the audience as the final collaborator. I think it's kind of bullshit when people say, "I'm not interested in the audience reaction." I'm like, "Then why do you do theater? You can write a book, then you don't have to see how the audience reacts." It's a living, breathing thing.
I do think there's a smaller audience that's looking for something that's a little more adult and a little more nuanced [than many Hollywood movies]. At the same time, I think everyone who's making movies hopes to appeal to the widest audience possible.
I think about all these influences and musical cultures, then the opinion of the audience is of course important, but when I'm working on an album or a new project, I'm not all the time thinking about what the audience will think about it.
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