Welcome to a brand new year of Improv Corner – there is one thing that fascinates me about improv and that is how it is portrayed in Television and Film. This is becoming more and more apparent in recent years because the comedy art form is sort of in fashion. There are some interesting topics that we can gain from these ways they are displayed so every so often we are going to look at different scenes from different shows and films.

The Office Ladies Podcast

I listen to the Office Ladies Podcast on a regular basis, if you are not sure what it is about, it is an in depth look at every episode of the American version of the comedy The Office with Jenna Fischer (who played Pam) and Angela Kingsley (who played Angela). On the 27th January 2021, they released he episode Money Part 1 which was looking at this episode in depth and they mentioned something that I feel is very relevant to improv which we have mentioned on this before but I thought it was really interesting to hear a podcast that is about a television show discuss this debate.

They were talking about a part in the show where Kevin talks about the fact that since changing bands from “Scrantonicity” to “Scrantonicity II” no one in the office has gone to see him perform live. This is a really interesting point because they start to discuss it and the reasons why members of the office didn’t go and see his new band and they were saying that more then likely characters like Pam had seen his other band perform live that maybe they didn’t want to go to a lot of his shows, not because they didn’t want to but because that been before and trying to find time probably was hard.

About 33 minutes into the episode Angela talks about she was part of an improv team before she started to do a lot of acting. She said that she was always inviting people and was upset when people couldn’t go to a show. However she discussed that she was performing three times a week that it was more then likely not practical for people to go to every show.

I think this is a really interesting and important issue to raise because when you do a show, it feels like it is the most vital thing for your friends and family to come, however the reality is, they can’t go to every show. It can feel rubbish when people do not turn up to your show or they cancel last minute but you have to sometimes realise it is not you, it does not mean they want to go it just means that life can get in the way.

I think it was really good to highlight this because so many times I have done shows and feel fed up because people have had to cancel last minute but then I take a step back to remember and think of all the times I have done the same to others. Sometimes life gets in the way and if you are doing a lot of shows in a week or a month, you have to expect this.