Mastering the Art of Comedy Improvisation: A Guide from the Upright Citizens Brigade

W. Jeff G.: I took 2 years of improv classes at Second City CLE when it was still a thing, and I cannot find a topic that was not covered by this book. Highly recomended.

United States on Sep 06, 2023

Issey Walton: A fantastic book. Very thorough and well written. Arrived very quickly.

United Kingdom on Feb 26, 2021

Nicolas Offermans: +: The book is in excellent condition.
-: Delivery arrived later than expected.

United Kingdom on Nov 01, 2020

Todd Pierce: The UCB manual is required reading for students of long form. And not just in the idiomatic sense, if you're a UCB student. Regardless, it's a nice book. Thicker than many, but not too thick. It has a soft cover, which makes it gentle and yielding in your hand, not hard and unattainable like a hard-cover book.

The words in this book are predominantly of the English language variety, the preferred language of people who read in the English language. I'm not saying English is a better language than say, German, but English is the language I expected the book to be written in, so am very satisfied.

Australia on Jun 11, 2020

Amazon Customer: I've seen so many comments about this being THE book for beginners and look forward to working through it. I definitely want to sing the praises of the seller (Smaller world future) , as they have been amazing. It was delayed, but they were very quick to respond, they resolved the issue and offered a discount as compensation.

United Kingdom on May 13, 2020

Hugo Salmon: Bien expliqué, pragmatique, tout en anglais en revanhe

Canada on Aug 03, 2018

chris leary: Wow! First of all, I think that most of these reviews cover it. Secondly, I'm only a novice; I just recently finished taking level one improv at the Vermont Comedy Club in Burlington, so far be it from me to "Critique" this book. Having said that, from my amature stand-point, this book has been tremendously helpful. It is clear, thorough, and concise, and has helped me to begin to find my bearings. The book clarifies the building-blocks of an improv-performance; especially helpful to me at this stage, was the break-down of building a "base-reality" and "finding a first unusual thing" in order to begin playing a "game". If you are reading this and thinking, "What the hell are you talking about?" After getting the book, it will be obvious, duh, no-shit, right!? Anyway, I could see immediately, that when I was playing my first mini-scene, that I had no idea of what I was doing. I was going for strange or obscure things to say, and digressing into laying the ground-work for confrontation, which was totally antithetical to to yes-anding. In other words, I was lost, and reaching, in order to build up something, "funny" out of my head, which was a complete, fizzling-failure. Like my...

United States on May 20, 2016

Kindle Customer: Improv is something I've always been in awe of but have been too afraid to try because it seemed like you had to be a naturally hilarious super-genius to do it. I had read "Truth in Comedy" years ago (UCB's book is a billion times better) and knew the basic concept of "yes, and...," but it still seemed like there would be so much pressure to keep coming up with one original, funny thing after another on the spot. I didn't realize how many underlying rules existed to make things work. The idea of finding and then playing "The Game" of a scene makes so much sense. I guess I realized that there were patterns before, but now when I watch improv, I can see that everything really does have a structure and focus. Now that I've read this book and know basic terminology and concepts, it makes watching improv or sketch comedy even better because I can identify all these things. Because of the book, I have more of an appreciation for improv as an artform (does that sound lame?), and I'm finally ready to try it for myself. I start my first improv class next month in DC (god.. I wish I lived in NYC or LA), and even though I'm a generally anxious person when it comes to new things, I'm not all...

United States on Aug 03, 2014

Christopher James Rock: I studied at UCBTLA and can say that The UCB Comedy Improvisation Manual is an excellent representation of their philosophy and technique. It's very challenging to boil down longform improv in a clear and concise way, but Matt Walsh, Ian Roberts, and Matt Besser do just that.

What separates this book from others is that it is actually a manual. Most improv books can be summed up as a collection of anecdotes, but are not particularly well written for educational purposes. You won't learn improv history from the manual, or about improvisers, but you'll learn about how to improvise.

The book is a good example of what I think the UCB Theatre has done most for improv as a whole which is push the art away from its loose, oral tradition and toward an effective codified system which provides improvisers (whether they agree with the UCB or not) with a useful common language. Learning improv without a clear approach vs learning the UCB approach is like the difference between learning to box by getting beat up by your burned out golden gloves uncle in your backyard, or practicing martial arts in a disciplined, school environment which wastes no time getting to the point. The...

United States on Apr 26, 2014