Improv Comedy Vocabulary

noun a word used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things

verb a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence

adverb a word that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb

preposition a word used before a noun or pronoun to show its relationship to another word in the sentence

article a word that is used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun

• When it comes to learning music, some people prefer to play by ear rather than read sheet music.
• I don't have the sheet music, so we'll just have to play by ear and figure it out as we go.
• I never know what time my friends will show up, so I always just play it by ear.
• In business, you can't always plan for everything - sometimes you just have to play it by ear and adapt to the situation.

noun the action of uncontrollably laughing on stage or while filming, often resulting in the inability to continue with a performance

• The actor couldn't control his corpsing during the serious scene.
• We all ended up corpsing during the blooper reel.
• Stop corpsing, we need to finish this scene!
• Her infectious laughter had everyone corpsing in no time.