Among Georgia Tech’s comedic community, there’s a particular style of humor that’s become most popular.
Improvisational comedy forces humorists to create skits without a script. It’s a free-form style that relies on quick thinking, good communication and a knack for the absurd.
On campus, that manifested in the Let’s Try This! improv troupe. Founded in 1989, the troupe is made up of students who hold practices and frequent shows at DramaTech’s Black Box stage.
Tech also hosts the Black Box Comedy Festival, one of the largest such events in the country and staged annually since 2004.
One night in January, Let’s Try This! held a show for a crowd of about 40, most of them students. The five players wore jeans and T-shirts with LTT! logos.
The audience was told to silence cell phones, as well as “any small organics that can make noise.”
They began the show with a long-form skit called a Harold. Their humor was absurdist, predicated on funny voices and bizarre one-liners. The scenario was a policeman trying to solve the mystery of a museum robbery, even though it was painfully clear his friend, the curator, was the culprit.
It escalated into a parrot-led animal uprising. The biggest laugh came when the curator finally explained his failed robbery: “The dirigible crashing wasn’t in my plans.”
Tech’s improv isn’t limited to students. Lew Lefton, information technology director for the School of Mathematics, performs stand-up and improv comedy. He’s developing a project studying improvising with Pete Ludovice, an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and fellow comedian.
Lefton is renowned on campus for his April Fools’ jokes. In 2006, he sent out a prank e-mail that his dog had a brain tumor and needed other dogs to donate blood. People weren’t amused when they learned it wasn’t true, he said.
“Lesson: Don’t joke about your dog’s health,” he said.
Lefton also teaches the DUCK — the acronym is tortuously derived from Decatur yoUth Comedy Krewe — improv group.
DUCK meets in the classroom building of a Decatur, Ga., church on Sunday afternoons. Its membership is made up of middle school students, and almost all of them are girls.
Lefton is tall with graying hair and a constant grin. He gestured constantly as he instructed the class. He announced they were invited to perform at a nearby retirement home.
“We don’t want to make them laugh so hard they soil their Depends,” Lefton said. “Oh, wait, that’s why they wear them. We can make them laugh as hard as we want.”
The class opened with warm-up games that emphasize eye contact, focus and rhythm. They then launched into improv skits. Lefton gave basic guidelines to keep their creativity going.
“‘Yes, and’ are the two key words of improv,” he said. “It’s like building a house. We each bring bricks. We aren’t setting our own house on top of another house.”
Lefton watched closely and occasionally stopped the players to give them pointers. He encouraged them to develop plot and character, even in the rapid-fire setting.
“Your character needs to change for it to be interesting,” he called out.
An improv structure begins with a platform — the who, what and where, Lefton explained. Then the players introduce a tilt, an absurd element that turns everything on its head.
But improv is a balance of structure and anarchy, Lefton said, as his students listened intently.
“It’s best to have no idea what’s going to happen,” he said. “In improv you want to embrace failure. Failure is funny.”
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