I always like finding inspiration for improv in really random places and today’s came from an episode of The Lonely Island Podcast where they discussed an old skit that I felt brought a lot of good points for the comedy form. Before we go into the reasons why – let’s take a look at the digital short.

This short was created on the spot as a musical guest dropped out last minute and they had to make a short film for the show anyway. It is bad but it shows that failures can be successful. It is really weird and you can tell it is not up to Lonely Island standard – there is a scroll that defines this halfway through the skit. I thought that this was a good example for improv comedy. Let me tell you why.

Since it is made up very last minute it shows that sometimes things can be bad and that is ok. This is not high quality at all but there are points where you find yourself starting to laugh because it is so awful and that is what can happen in improv. Sometimes there will be scenes that you will be a part of may not feel right, may feel bad and that is ok – it may not be the best improv in the world but someone in the audience will find it funny.

There is one thing that you learn very early on in improv and that is that improv is failure – the comedy comes out of failing and that is a good thing! So the next time that you think things are going bad, embrace it!

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