"While you're improvising, you may come up with something which will break him up. As soon as that smile comes out, you know that, hey, we're having fun"
About this Quote
Improvisation, in Shelley Berman's telling, isn’t some mystical burst of creativity; it’s a tactical hunt for a crack in the other person’s composure. “Break him up” is comedy’s blunt little truth: the goal isn’t polish, it’s disruption. You’re aiming for that involuntary surrender where another performer stops acting and starts reacting. The smile isn’t just evidence of a joke landing, it’s the visible moment control slips. Comedy happens in that slip.
Berman came up in an era when stand-up was shifting from joke machines to conversationalists, when the mic became a place to sound like a person thinking out loud. His famous phone-call routines were essentially improvised realism, built to feel spontaneous even when shaped. So when he talks about improvising, he’s pointing to a performer’s most valuable instrument: live sensitivity. The room, the timing, the partner’s rhythm, even a tiny mistake can become material if you’re listening hard enough.
The subtext is almost tender: the “hey” reads like someone letting the audience in on a shared secret. There’s ego here, sure, but it’s not the swagger of dominance; it’s the pleasure of mutual recognition. Once the other guy smiles, the performance stops being a test and becomes a game. Berman’s line insists that the real win in comedy isn’t applause as judgment, but laughter as proof of connection - the moment everyone agrees, briefly, to drop the defenses and play.
Berman came up in an era when stand-up was shifting from joke machines to conversationalists, when the mic became a place to sound like a person thinking out loud. His famous phone-call routines were essentially improvised realism, built to feel spontaneous even when shaped. So when he talks about improvising, he’s pointing to a performer’s most valuable instrument: live sensitivity. The room, the timing, the partner’s rhythm, even a tiny mistake can become material if you’re listening hard enough.
The subtext is almost tender: the “hey” reads like someone letting the audience in on a shared secret. There’s ego here, sure, but it’s not the swagger of dominance; it’s the pleasure of mutual recognition. Once the other guy smiles, the performance stops being a test and becomes a game. Berman’s line insists that the real win in comedy isn’t applause as judgment, but laughter as proof of connection - the moment everyone agrees, briefly, to drop the defenses and play.
Quote Details
| Topic | Smile |
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