Witaske talks improv

Apologies for slacking but I recently caught this article where Chris Witaske talks about improv.

“The long-form improvisation is doing 15 minutes from just one suggestion from the audience,” said Witaske, who appears in The Second City’s “Fair & Unbalanced” on May 21 at the Paramount Theatre in Aurora. “You strive to get good at the long form. The true talent in Chicago is being well versed in the long form of improvisational comedy.

“In long form,” Witaske continued, “you can have an ‘on’ night when you kill it and then an ‘off’ night when you dive bomb and you are performing to silence.”[...]

“We have 50 years of Second City scenes to draw from,” said Witaske about the show. “Second City has a staff of producers who watch the sketches and decide what we will do, but we all do have a voice. There is some original material written by us. We have maybe three or four original scenes in the first two acts.”

Witaske gets great satisfaction from making people laugh.

“There is nothing better,” he said. “You think you are funny and people also think you are funny.”

He also finds the collaboration of fellow comedians exhilarating.

“When you are with a group for a while it becomes like well-oiled machinery and you know each other’s sensibilities and who they are,” said Witaske, who has performed with Second City for about one year. “It is like a good basketball team. You get ‘in the zone’ when you perform. It is a true ensemble process.”