Character Ideas For Improvisational Comedy

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, this is Paul Zuckerman with the cast of Chicago City Limits here in New York City, and today we're going to you some techniques for improvisational comedy. Good character actors are always looking for new characters. One way to do it is to observe people. They're all over. There's lots of characters out in the world. Find a couple of observable characteristics and incorporate them into your character. In this scene, Linda is going to play an older dancer that she saw. There's 2 characters that she noticed. One is that kind of turkey neck that was going on, and the other is this poor dancer probably had better days in the past. Let's see how that turns into a character. Hello, thank you for having me. It's really an honor Mrs. Costeslav. I've been an admirer of you for so long. Can I get you a glass of water? Are you thirsty? Oh, no, no, no. Dancers are never thirsty. We retain water. Not in a bad sense though. Oh, when I danced in the Bolshoi, the oldish Bolshoi. Yes, yes I remember I was looking at microfiche in the library researching your early career, and I saw that you danced the part of the swan. Not like today, we were real swans. We had feathers."