Leonard admits that even for an organization that is based on comedy, it can be challenging to remember to use it to maintain a positive culture:
So with the goal of helping others make comedy intentional in their organizations (and lives), Libera and Leonard offer these tips:
Know yourself: Mine your own history and life for the things you know really well that you maybe don’t consider that you know well (but you do).
Listen well: Put all your attention on the person across from you to really understand who that person is.
Co-create: Work together and play together to find connection in true agreement.
The trick Libera discovered about specificity leading to humor is one that you can also use with a bit of work and practice. Mine your life history for subjects you know well.
How do you do that internal exploration? Libera says to start by listing 10 things you are an expert in. That may mean expanding your view of what it means to be an expert; they should be things you could talk about for an extended period of time. It could be Japanese anime or the contents of your mother’s refrigerator.
And because Libera loves lists of 10: Another activity is starting a practice of making a daily list of 10 things (for example, 10 breakfast cereals or 10 names for small children).
(See Activity #1 in the “Humor Activities” Appendix: List-making for humor.)
Another way to know yourself better to derive humor is to think specifically about the different versions of yourself. This this will enable you to access the best version of yourself when you need it. It will also allow you to craft and change your “act” to fit different settings.
Libera describes the advice she gives about strategies for auditioning for an improv troupe, which requires auditioners to make up and play multiple characters on the spot. She has seen many times that if an auditioner goes in cold and then “just sees what happens,” often times they end up playing the dumbest character they have. “Because the first thing that is going to come to your brain is the most obvious cheapest thing.”
Her guidance to students auditioning: They don’t have to decide what they are going to do in the audition, but they should take some time to think about who are the characters that they most enjoy playing. Then those characters are going to be available to them before they go into the audition.
A popular Second City improv exercise helps actors focus on the person across from them in a more profound way. Here are the instructions: “Have a conversation with one other person, and when you speak, the first word of your sentence will be the last word that person just spoke.” That simple exercise requires you to listen all the way to the end of a sentence, and by doing that you are actually listening to all the information that person is giving you. Leonard says that we normally don’t do that.
(See Activity# 2 in the “Humor Activities” Appendix: Listening)
Also, when you listen well, doing callbacks (literally repeating or referencing something that was said or done earlier) become easy. Libera explains its power:
Libera says this can be especially powerful for people who don’t have the natural ability to be funny:
Many comedians are successful because they are master observers. They have the ability to translate what they observe into words and insights that are funny. Those words and insights are mostly funny because they are true in a surprising way; most people are not observing. Humor is created by paying attention a lot of the time.
(See Activity # 3 in the “Humor Activities” Appendix: Observe your world)
Don’t focus on yourself and whether you are funny. Instead, put the focus on the other person.
Libera argues that people often ask if they can teach someone to be funny. But she says that is not the right question. Why? Because comedy is not about the comedian. It’s about the space between the comedian and the audience. Leonard says it’s almost like the question of whether a tree falling in the forest makes a sound.
Further…. Second City’s core philosophy is that comedy is about discovery with a group of people; its ensembles succeed or fail together on stage. There is a rule in ensemble-created comedy that when you collaborate, you should bring a brick, not a cathedral. You don’t have to have the complete idea; just bring a brick and see what happens. It is the building of the cathedral together that creates the best ideas in the end. Leonard extends the metaphor “If you are building something and you walk in with the blueprints, no one else has a place.” Second City has a culture of practice and process being more important than ownership, which he says, “is a big part of creating a bedrock for comedy to work.” Another ensemble rule is: make every member look good on stage.
Second City does not define an ensemble as a group of people, but rather as a way of behaving with a group of people – in which everyone looks to support and include the disparate voices into a mission that is larger than any one voice.
Leonard says:
As such, Second City teaches its acting ensembles to understand their own strengths and weakness so as to be the best part of a team they can be.
In sum...
Creating (and co-creating) humor is a three step process:
Mine your own history and life for the things you know really well that you maybe don’t consider that you know well (but you do.)
Put all your attention on the person across from you to really understand who that person is.
Work together and play together to find connection in true agreement.
Up Next: Humor Activities Appendix