The set reminds me of something Early said to me when I first interviewed him: “People who are performing themselves, the way that we see who they really are is in the way that performance fails.” To do a bit like this, where the line between real and fake is ambiguous, in front of a studio audience of tourists and the most middle-American audience at home, is risky. Right away, this audience might not even register any of the performance as comedy, resulting in an excruciating four minutes of televised audience silence. However, it was still better than the alternative. “The weirdness of stand-up is that you have to pretend that it’s off-the-cuff,” Early explained on an episode of You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, talking about the Tonight Show set. “That is so embarrassing to me.”

Inside isn’t a live performance. There are multiple takes and camera setups over the course of many months. Still, Inside is the special of Burnham’s that connects the most emotionally with people, not in spite of its being his most contrived but because of it. It posits that attempts to remove artifice are actually artifice, but one can attempt to create artifice genuinely. In contrast, around the release of Inside, it became popular for comedians to include documentary footage in their specials, as if they were scientists offering mathematical proof. “See?” they’d say. “This proves that it’s real.” But how people behave in a documentary to a person like Burnham is also a performance, so to call it “true” feels false. Inside feels true because it’s honest about being manufactured. Still, they laugh. It is a side-effect of attempting to achieve something more beautiful, honest, and truthful, something that has far more to do with the theatre--which puts your attention on what is important about being a human in a community..." Group Improvisation is one of the best books of improv games for work. The book has hundreds of improv exercises meant to be done in teams. The games are grouped by intention, and sections dedicated to results such as bonding, focus, creativity, and energy. The ultimate goal of these activities is to help group members grow to know and trust each other, and to create stronger team dynamics. These aims are especially relevant to the workplace, and can serve as the inspiration to do improv with teams. Group Improvisation is an invaluable tool for leaders looking to guide teams through improv activities.SHOW, DON’T TELL An improviser accepts what his partner says as a gift, and builds on that idea. He may respond with another gift, and the two of them build their scene based on the information in their statements. They must make active choices, rather than passive ones, and then follow through on their ideas. Everything said can be heard and used, even what might be considered a mistake. Since "action begins with the disruption of a routine," the "mistake" could be the disruption that begins the action. Too many actors make the error of talking about doing something instead of doing it; a potentially interesting scene gets frittered away because no one is actually doing anything. If the idea is active, it leads, step by step, to the next idea. But if the idea is talked away, the actors never arrive at the next idea. Suppose two actors are on stage, and one of them must choose whether to stay with his wife and children, or run off to a silver mine in South America. An inexperienced improviser might make the mistake of agonizing over the decision for several minutes, weighing the pros and cons. Boring! He might even choose to stay with his family. This is a more noble decision, but he's just chosen the routine, rather than the disruption, and we're left with no action. He's also wasted the audience's time wallowing in his angst. Chekov or Ibsen could probably script an interesting version of this scenario, but in improv, the active choice is the only one to take. Given the choice, any experienced improviser must immediately leave his wife and family, and run off to South America. If it's only a thirty-second scene, so be it — this allows us more time for their follow-up scene, which will obviously begin deep in the South American silver mine. See how much further the active choice leads? Scenes are much more interesting when the idea is seen, rather than talked about. Active choices forward the scene. Passive choices keep it stagnant. There's really no choice, is there?

KEY POINTS FOR CHAPTER FIVE *Make assumptions — don't ask questions. *Look for the game within your scene and play it. *Listen and remember. *Listen for the whole idea in a statement. *Avoid preconceived notions. This book did not move me emotionally, nor did I necessarily learn a lot of new things from it. Nonetheless, I rate it very highly. The concepts here are both foundational and profound. If you've ever done improv before,you know that improvisers must listen carefully, learn to trust each other, find agreement, play games, tell stories, and respond to the collective group mind. This book talks about all of these ideas, and suggests practical exercises on how to engage with them. I have learned many of these things piece-meal over the years, but it's nice to see them all here, in one place, put together in a thoughtful and systematic way.Kim "Howard" Johnson is an accomplished writer, performer; and improviser who has studied and collaborated with Del Close and Charna Halpern for many years. Howard is the author of the best-selling The First 200 Years of Monty Python, And Now For Something Completely Trivial and Life (Before and) After Python. He is also a veteran magazine writer; covering the worlds of film, television and fantasy for Starlog, Prevue, Comics Scene and Video Action magazines, as well as various projects for DC Comics. In addition to working for several years as a reporter and announcer in radio news, Howard has worked for and with the Monty Python group as part of the crew on Life of Brian. Upon making his home in Chicago, he began studying at Second City and performing stand-up comedy, and shortly thereafter started with the ImprovOlympic, studying and performing for several years, culminating in the writing and performing of the Del Close-directed Honor Finnegan vs. the Brain of the Galaxy. The late Del Close's life was virtually a history of American improvisation. Mr. Close started his comedy career with Mike Nichols and Elaine May in the Compass Players in St. Louis during the 1950s. Moving on to Second City and eventually to San Francisco as creator and director of the legendary radical political satire comedy troupe The Committee, Del returned to Second City in 1973 and remained for twelve years its highly successful director. He was co-creator of SCTV with Andrew Alexander as well as "House Metaphysician " for three seasons of Saturday Night Live. He is credited for honing the talents of John Belushi, Bill Murray, Gilda Radner, Betty Thomas, John Candy and many others. Close's dream of creating an art movement came to fruition when he hooked up with his partner Charna Halpern where they created long-form improvisation at the ImprovOlympic. Together they changed the face of improvisational comedy. A life-long devotee of improvisational comedy; Del Close died in Chicago on March 4, 1999 at the age of 64. Notable Quote: “Improvisation thrives at the pivotal intersection where planning and strategy meet execution.”