Improv Nation

October 1, 2017
An uncensored look at how and why improvisation came to be such a significant art form.In his latest book, Wasson (Fosse, 2014, etc.) presents a refreshing look at the ways in which comedians, artists, writers, and actors started getting involved in improvisation. Today, we often take it for granted, with comedians active in popular culture--especially in the Trump era--distilling complicated political phenomena into palpable and often hilarious stories. Divided into three sections--"We the Jews (1940-1968)," "We the Punks (1969-1984)," and "We the Nerds (1984-)"--the book covers the necessary material, including the public's growing obsession with TV as the primary artistic medium. More importantly, Wasson takes readers on a journey through a genre that "was invented, in America, by young, mostly middle-class amateurs, performers, and producers who, in the true spirit of the form, were making it up as they went along." We meet all the key players, including the inimitable Del Close, the notorious screenwriter and actress Elaine May and her relentless partner Mike Nichols, Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels, Second City Television director Andrew Alexander, Tina Fey, and many others. This massive cast of characters spans decades, but they shared the same values: "players understood that no improvisational ensemble could sustain an atmosphere of competition...creating spontaneous realities en masse demanded...patience and consideration." Wasson has a clear understanding of the challenges many of these comedians faced--particularly the Second City group, who, in part, worked with actors such as Dustin Hoffman and competed with the scripted protocol of big movie studios in introducing a new kind of stage presence: "you had to stay funny, which was difficult when everyone around you, riff after spectacular riff, was actually getting funnier." While comedians today take up a large space in public life, Wasson reminds us that a lot of hard work has been done for them to get there.An entertaining book, recommended for aspiring comedians who want to historicize their practice.

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Starred review from October 30, 2017
Wasson (Fosse) makes a thoroughly entertaining case that improvisational comedy has “replaced jazz as America’s most popular art” and represents the best of democracy. Improv was a product of the McCarthy era and came of age quickly with an energetic, ambitious cast of characters. Wasson brilliantly weaves together the disparate strands of improv’s first decade, when players with different philosophies and skill sets persevered in defining their art. These pioneers, including the duo of Mike Nichols and Elaine May and actor and comedian Del Close, influenced the explosion of comic talent that poured out over the next half century. Wasson nicely foreshadows future events and collaborations and does an admirable job of making simultaneous events easy to follow by drawing contrasts (for example, the collegiality of SCTV’s Canadian style vs. the raw competitive ambition of New York City’s Saturday Night Live cast in the 1970s). He covers such major late-night figures as John Belushi, Stephen Colbert, and Bill Murray, as well as Alan Arkin and Harold Ramis. In the spirit of an improv performer, Wasson takes care to never let the stars take over the show. Photos.

Starred review from March 26, 2018
De Vries does a remarkable job of narrating Wasson’s sweeping history of American improvisational comedy, which begins in a Chicago bar in the McCarthy era and covers the emergence of groups such as Second City, Upright Citizens Brigade, and the cast of Saturday Night Live. De Vries’s whimsical tones capture the eccentric working relationship of the groundbreaking team of Mike Nichols and Elaine May as they move from stage to film. In rendering the heartbreaking passages related to comedic superstars John Belushi and Chris Farley—both of whom died from drug overdoses at the age of 33—De Vries provides a wistful tenor of regret in the reactions of their friends and colleagues. De Vries also ably handles the rapid transitions in the narrative with skill, pausing just enough to shift gears so that listeners can keep up. With the exception of providing vivid mimicry of Bill Murray’s performance as the gopher-hunting groundskeeper in the movie Caddyshack, De Vries does not attempt to imitate celebrity voices. Rather, he devotes the bulk of his energy to the narrative at large and in doing so skillfully keeps listeners attuned. A HMH/Dolan hardcover.

Starred review from October 15, 2017
Wasson, author of the stellar biography Fosse (2013), brings his spellbinding prose style to this history of improvisational comedy, which, to mention just one of the book's many surprises, has only been around for about 70 years (although some would say its inspirations go back centuries to the Italian commedia dell'arte). There's a natural flow to the author's writinga conversational tone and a way of capturing our interestthat transforms what could have been a dry recitation of people, places, and facts into a compelling, absolutely unputdownable story. Wasson has interviewed a tremendous number of people for the book (early improv groundbreakers like Carol Sills and Paul Sand; notables like Mike Nichols, Alan Arkin, Buck Henry, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Tina Fey, and Dustin Hoffman), and he supplements those interviews with well-chosen material from numerous previously published sources. Not quite an oral history in the manner of, for example, Shales and Miller's Live from New York (2002), the book is nevertheless driven by the stories of the people who built improv from the ground up, the people of Second City, the Groundlings, and other groupsthe performers, creators, producers, and even the audiences. And, in case you're wondering, yes, the book is funny. In places, very funny. A remarkable story, magnificently told.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)