Word: improvements
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...comics are female, up from perhaps 2% a decade ago. Even that minuscule group used to give itself the short end of the shtick: "When I was born I was so ugly, the doctor slapped my mother." In comedy's Paleolithic era, notes Budd Friedman, impresario of Los Angeles' Improv comedy club, "stand-up was traditionally a white male enclave. But today there are no restrictions. Women are able to use their intelligence and their femininity and their strength to say what they want...
...public approval with his portrayal of a delicately nuanced weirdo in sex, lies, and videotape. Around the same time, sometime brat-packer Rob Lowe made his first large claim on public opprobrium when it was revealed that he had staged a somewhat less formal drama -- more of an improv, really -- involving sex, lies and videotape in an Atlanta hotel room during the 1988 Democratic Convention. Now the two young actors are co-starring in something called Bad Influence, and guess what familiar items feature in its plot...
Like Harry and Sally, the movie is hardworking, spot on; it winepresses its conversation into epigrams. No surprise here. Reiner found wayward comedy in such genres as the rock documentary (This Is Spinal Tap) and the historical romance (The Princess Bride). Crystal, the improv master who is Reiner's closest friend -- "We finish each other's sentences," Crystal says, "and he finishes my lunch" -- meets the challenge of making a compulsive Lothario not just likable but impishly seductive. And Ephron, a helpful Heloise of emotional heartburn, perks the script with clever answers to modern problems. How long should...
This weekend Harvard's oldest comedy troupe. On Thin Ice, presents an improv show in the Loeb Experimental theater tonight and tomorrow night. On Thin Ice has been at Harvard for six years, and models its performances after those of Chicago's Second City, where John Belushi got his start...
...half-year-old TIGP, which was started by freshmen in the fall of 1986, bills itself as basic improv theater, meaning that its members don't discuss specific plots before they go on stage; they take groups of three words or themes as their points of reference. Friday night the actors in the 16-member ensemble will spoof topics from TV talk show announcers to soap operas to docudramas, and Saturday night's Chez Cliche should feature, you guessed it, tried and true murder mystery themes...