I remember with pride a scene I did in the late 80s, “The Welcome Wagon in Hell.” We — Aida and a female improviser (X) whose name I don’t recall — did not go into the piece with anything in mind. The title of any worthwhile improv scene usually comes in retrospect. We asked for a suggestion of a place and we were given Hell. I remember it was Aida who made the offer at the top. She said to X: “Good afternoon, we’re the Welcome Wagon. You’ve been a very bad person in your life, and we’re here to reward you.” From there we loaded up Hell’s new citizen with all the largesse a lucky little lady could dream of — washer/dryer, Camaro, hair products, a weedwhacker, and a lifetime supply of Coors Light, however long that life might prove to be. The game really became fun when X, in appreciation, offered to return the favor with criminal acts against anyone we might choose. The secret of the scene’s success was there were no jokes in it. It was simply an unlikely premise played with absolute earnestness. That it was a female willing to perpetrate stereotypically male behavior — whacking sniveling do-gooders — made it even better.

The July 5th New Yorker has an article, “First Banana” (p 50), featuring Steve Carrell. Tad Friend, the writer, explains Steve’s approach: “Carrell earns his laughs not with wit — he dislikes jokey jokes, or dialogue that suggests that his character is trying to be funny — but by investing all his faith and energy in deeply boneheaded convictions.”

Carrell is one of the most talented and well-trained improvisers in the world. To me, well-trained is the great virtue. One we can all aspire to. Talent, as we understand it, is a given, wired in at birth or maybe at the start of kindergarten. But we can all train ourselves to do anything better than we do at present.

The article talks about a principle — possibly the fundamental principle — of improv. Say yes. Somehow we believe all theater is rooted in conflict. That may be so, but plays are laboriously worked out. In improvisation, quibbles simply narrow the options for action: “Wow, Joe, your teeth are white today.” “You’re crazy. Those whitening strips are a ripoff” An exchange like that practically forces you to change the subject. A workable response would be, “Thanks. A fashion photographer asked me to pose for him.” That’s what we call “Yes and,” and it opens up a lot of possibilities.

Okay, most of you aren’t improvisers. Why am I going on about this?

I love conversation. Socializing. Arguing is a pain in the ass. When a friend at coffee tells me about some stunt his landlord pulled, it’s not my job to one-up him. Or to side with his landlord. I want to know more details. At heart, I’m a gossip. Not malicious, I just want to know what a person has to do to put food on his family and hold his head up while approximating dignity.

The New Yorker article touches on another concept, call-backs. When you’re listening carefully, everything that’s introduced into a scene becomes grist. A trivial comment — “I really like aubergine eyeliner” — becomes more significant when later you admire the aubergine sunset. Or when the surgeon marks the place to cut with an aubergine pencil. Or when the professor enters the scene with an etymological explanation of the word “aubergine.”

Likewise, in conversation, it’s flattering, and endearing, to realize five minutes later that your partner paid attention to a detail you put out there. But it’s impossible to do this when you are thinking about what you are going to say.

I’m not a fan of the classic film comedies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s. The dialogue is too damned clever and laden with wordplay. Wisecrack still permeates our chatter to an overlarge extent. Wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eatin’ crackers leads to a pun on eatin’ crackers as in going down on rednecks. I heard it the other day. I smiled gamely, and was happy when the talk turned to the excrutiatingly boring, but less pun-provoking, financial derivatives.

Frankly, I think this is true of Shakespeare. I more enjoy a good group of improvisers doing made-up Shakespeare than I do watching the plays. At the eight or ten plays I’ve attended, the laughter seems to be cued by an expected laugh-line, a type of delivery that says sixteenth-century playgoers found this funny, so go ahead and be amused. That does not mean I think Shakespeare is without value, only that few of us understand history well-enough to be in the moment.

The comedies Carrell stars in are made very much in a new way. One I appreciate. They work from a script, but are not wedded to it. Improvisationally trained actors help immensely. And the technology of movie-making now makes it possible to do a huge number of takes. Carrell often goes into a scene with five or six ways he wants to play it, and he tries them all. The players, introducing new material, and ways of playing it, are often in danger of cracking up the other players, thus ruining a great take. “Carell rarely allows  himself to break,” the article points out. He says, “If somebody is doing something great, it’s selfish to ruin the take.” In a scene in which two Great Danes run into the office, “… and start vigorously licking the actor Ed Helms’s crotch (which had been smeared with smoked chicken livers), Carrell looked on blandly until the directer said ‘Cut’, and then sank to his knees, paralyzed: “Oh, dear God,” he said, “You hear the clicking of teeth.”

Keeping a lid on it, too, is a difficult life skill. I remember at my elementary school principal, Mr Brubacher’s, funeral — at the viewing of his body — Jimmy Shimpack and I saw a couple houseflies crawling out of the dead man’s shirt-collar and onto his gray neck. At first we were startled. Just as we were about to laugh, Mrs Johannson, standing behind us, cleared her throat.

We didn’t have to make up any jokes about that. When we were free, we just laughed.