"Improv feels hard when we get on our own backs thinking we have to make it really good, or that we have to be really funny. It’s this dance where of course we want to be thought of as “funny” and of course we want the audience to laugh, but the tighter a grip we use, the more of the funny we seem to lose. “If you desire to attain enlightenment, you will never attain it”, or something like that.
I think it’s also the difference between the idea of capital-F Funny (noun) being this thing to strive for in our improv, vs lowercase-f funny (adjective) being instead something that’s hyperlocal to the scene or the show. It’s context dependent, and it’s why so often we struggle in recounting a great show to somebody who wasn’t there. It could’ve been the funniest thing ever when we saw it, but somehow it falls short in the retelling.
Lowercase-f funny naturally comes out of honest listening. Oftentimes in a show lines that will get big laughs are ones that call something back; maybe some brief line or description our teammates gave, not necessarily with another thought or some big intention (capital-F Funny). By calling it back we are saying to our team as well as to the audience: “Hey, I heard that thing you said before, and I’m making it important.” Put another way, from the perspective of the teammate who just did something without trying to be Funny: the things we say or do while not trying to be Funny are more bricks we hand to our team for the shared effort of building the show together.
Laughter from the audience is not a strictly transactional “That was Funny; you may have this laugh”. When you call something back (for instance) and it gets a laugh, that is the audience saying “I acknowledge what you did there and I appreciate it.” The audience is smart and they’ve been paying attention. They’re laughing because you just showed them you were paying attention, too. "
