The Funniest One In The Room

Nichols and May. John Belushi. Bill Murray. Chris Farley. Tina Fey. Mike Myers. Stephen Colbert. For nearly a half century, Del Close—cocreator of the Harold, director for the Second City, San Francisco's the Committee, and the ImprovOlympic, and “house metaphysician” for Saturday Night Live—influenced improvisational theater's greatest comedic talents. His students went on to found the Groundlings in Los Angeles, the Upright Citizens Brigade in both New York and Los Angeles, and the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago. But this Pied Piper of improv has gone largely unrecognized outside the close-knit comedy community. Del was never one to let the truth of his life stand in the way of a good story—and yet the truth is even more fascinating than the fiction. In his early years, he traveled the country with Dr. Dracula's Den of Living Nightmares, knew L. Ron Hubbard before Scientology, and appeared in The Blob. Del cavorted with the Merry Pranksters, used aversion therapy to recover from alcoholism, and kicked a cocaine habit with the help of a coven of witches. And when he was dying, Del bequeathed his postmortem skull to the Goodman Theatre for use in its productions of Hamlet—a final legend that lives on, long beyond the death of the father of long-form improvisation.

Okay...so...we're going to send 13 guys on a three year journey to heal the sick and feed the hungry. One guy has a messiah complex. Another wanting to overthrow the government. One just questions everything anybody says. It will be a bunch of blue collar workers and on IRS agent. In any other book it would sound like another Hangover sequel. We call it the gospels. So many wonderful stories that have survived all these centuries and yet they seem devoid of humor. We're talking about 13 guys on a road trip. You can't tell me a contest didn't "break" out at least one time. The Funniest Guy in the Room takes old jokes and even older pictures and supposes what probably happened if we were willing to admit it. Jesus was the son of the being who created laughter in the first place. He understood joy better than any other human being who walked the face of this earth. Why is he so often portrayed as the morose teacher you hoped you didn't get in high school. It was the theologian GK Chesterton who said, "It is the test of a good religion whether you can joke about it. This book, puts it to the test." "Nearly made me blow goat's milk through my nose." -St Francis of Assisi "I demand space for rebuttal." -Satan (King of the Underworld and DMV offices.) "Yeah....yeah...he really wasn't all that funny." -Burt Christ (Brother) "Floral colors and lighter fabrics can bring the Spring to any room." -Tony Deangelo, Interior Motives (HG Network)

In an educational era defined by large school campuses and overcrowded classrooms, it is easy to overlook the era of one-room schools, when teachers filled every role, including janitor, and provided a familylike atmosphere in which children also learned from one another. In Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers, William Lynwood Montell reclaims an important part of Kentucky's social, cultural, and educational heritage, assembling a fun and fascinating collection of schoolroom stories that chronicle a golden era in Kentucky. The firsthand narratives and anecdotes in this collection cover topics such as teacher-student relationships, day-to-day activities, lunchtime foods, students' personal relationships, and, of course, the challenges of teaching in a one-room school. Montell includes tales about fund-raising pie suppers, pranks, outrageous student behavior (such as the quiet little boy whose first "sharing" involved profanity), and variety of other topics. Montell even includes some of his own memories from his days as a pupil in a one-room school. Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers is a delightful glimpse of the history of education.

Improvisation teachers have long known that the human mind could be trained to be effortlessly spontaneous and intuitive. Drinko explores what these improvisation teachers knew about improvisation's effects on consciousness and cognition and compares these theories to current findings in cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy.

A collection of riddles which includes advice on being funny and humourous quotations from famous people.

Discover the behind-the-scenes story of how The Second City theater created a generation of world class great actors, directors, and writers. In the late Fifties and Sixties, iconoclastic young rebels in Chicago opened two tiny theaters—The Compass and The Second City—where they satirized politics, religion, and sex. Building scenes by improvising based on audience suggestions turned out to be a fine way to develop great actors, directors, and writers. Alumni went on to create such groundbreaking works as The Graduate, Groundhog Day, and Don’t Look Up. Many of them also became stars on Saturday Night Live. Something Wonderful Right Away features the pioneers of the empire that transformed American comedy. This new edition tells even more of the story. Included for the first time is an interview with Viola Spolin, the genius who invented theater games that were the foundation of improvisational theater. Also included are dozens of follow-up stories about Mike Nichols, Barbara Harris, Del Close, Joan Rivers, Alan Arkin, and Gilda Radner, plus “You Only Shoot the Ones You Love,” the story of how this book’s author, playwright Jeffrey Sweet, became so involved in the community he covered that he was captured by it.

This definitive history brings Chicago’s celebrated theater and comedy scenes to life with stories from some of its biggest stars spanning sixty-five years. Chicago is a bona fide theater town, bursting with vitality that thrills local fans and produces generation after generation of world-renowned actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Now Mark Larson shares the rich theatrical history of Chicago through first-person accounts from the people who made it. Drawing from more than three hundred interviews, Larson weaves a narrative that expresses the spirit of Chicago’s ensemble ethos: the voices of celebrities such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Ed Asner, George Wendt, Michael Shannon, and Tracy Letts comingle with stories from designers, composers, and others who have played a crucial role in making Chicago theater so powerful, influential, and unique. Among many other topics, this book explores the early days of the fabled Compass Players and the legendary Second City in the ‘50s and ‘60s; the rise of acclaimed ensembles like Steppenwolf in the ‘70s; the explosion of storefront and neighborhood companies in the ‘80s; and the enduring global influence of the city as the center of improv training and performance.

Dramatic Realism, since its birth in the hectic late years of the nineteenth century, gave theatrical and thematic energy to the interaction between a play’s text and the way that it looked on the stage. Characters began to find themselves in rooms and settings that played an active and changing role in the drama, and their dialogue and reactions evolved in time with these changes. As life itself became more elaborate during the 20th Century, so these rooms were invaded and then defined by the outside world. Fred Miller Robinson’s enjoyable and stimulating essays on this enduring genre tackle the dreams and anxieties of the middles classes of the Industrial Revolution – dreams of domestic comfort and refuge, and anxieties about how entrapping that comfort could be. Moving from Ibsen to Chekhov and onwards into later plays in which the reality of ‘Realism’ comes under scrutiny, this is a book to dip into before a performance or to study during a class.