Starting the 'ABC' Improv Game

Series Summary

“So what is the deal with airports? You walk in and everybody is in such a hurry. Its like the time your dad left without you at the gas station and made you chase the car down the road while your brother and sister are in the back sit giving you the finger...what?...why is everyone leaving?...sir, please don't throw your beer at me...why is my microphone off?...” Stand up comedy and improv comedy is a difficult career and making it is no laughing matter. It takes work, practice, persistence, and wit sharper than Oscar Wilde's pen. It is important for a comedian to be relevant, creative, intelligent, and accessible, even when objects are being thrown at him or her from an angry customer in the audience.

In this free video series, let comedian Les McGehee school you in the art of humor as he teaches you how to do improv comedy. Learn different improvisational techniques and games, how to apply those techniques to different situations, and how to use the art of improv comedy to make people laugh. This step by step comedy lesson is sure to make you laugh and get you closer to your dream of telling jokes for a living.

Video Transcript

"Hi everybody, it’s Les McGehee at Expert Village.com. I’m the author of Plays Well With Others, a Handbook of Improvisation and Play. You can get that book at LesMcGehee.com, or at Amazon, or at a bookstore near you, or just go and get it from the library. We’re going to talk about Improv games today, and the next set of skills we’re going to talk about are ABC games, there’s a lot of different ways to play ABC games and it all basically stems from the skill of choosing to start each sentence in a scene or a game or a monologue with a subsequent letter of the alphabet. For instance if we took a topic like dogs, to keep it simple and I started with A, then I might say, All dogs have things in common, even though they are different. But some dogs are more specialized for different things than other dogs. Cats on the other hand have very few specializations. As you can see I’m starting each major sentence with the next letter of the alphabet. So you can do a monologue like this, or you, and that can be very fun, surprising to both the performer and the audience, or you can also do a scene like that, where I’m going to start my sentence with “A” and you’re going to start your sentence with “B” and we act out a scene like that. "