Guides

MCing an improv show

The host decides whether the night feels like a show or a rehearsal with witnesses — here's the whole job, from preshow to lights.

The MC is the frame around the picture. Nobody remembers a good frame, everybody notices a bad one, and the job starts before the audience sits down.

Before the lights

Walk the room early. Know where the light switch actually is, what the sound situation is, and who's running it. Decide your running order with the teams and write it down — the moment mid-show when nobody knows who's next reads from the back row.

Set the house: music on as people arrive (something with energy, not something with lyrics people will talk over), house lights slightly down. An audience decides how much fun they're going to have before anyone says a word, mostly from the room.

The opening

You have ninety seconds to teach a room how to behave. The opening needs exactly four things:

  1. Energy slightly above the room's. Not manic — one notch up. They calibrate to you.
  2. The rules of tonight: how many teams, roughly how long, where the bathroom is, and that everything is made up. Audiences new to improv genuinely don't know that last one; telling them raises every laugh ten percent.
  3. A warm-up laugh that costs nothing — a quick poll ("who got dragged here by the person next to them?"), never a joke that can die.
  4. Teach the suggestion. Before you ever ask for one, tell them what a good one looks like: "one word, something from your actual life — a place you've been, a job you've had." You'll still get proctologist; acknowledge it warmly and take the second suggestion. Never shame a suggester — the room notices how you treat them.

Between acts

This is the real work. Your jobs, in priority order: reset the energy (a big clear "give it up for—" with a full arm), cover the transition (teams need twenty seconds to get on and off; you own those twenty seconds), and keep it short. The audience came for the teams. Two sentences and a name is a great intro. Your bits between acts should be interest paid, not principal.

If a set just died: don't reference it, don't apologize for it. "That was [team]!" with full warmth, then move. The audience takes their cue about whether that was okay from you, and it was okay.

Handling the room

Talkers and hecklers are almost always solved with warmth plus proximity — walk near them, include them once on your terms ("sir, you're clearly having the best night of anyone here"), and move on. Escalating gets you a scene you're not in control of; the venue's staff handles genuine problems, not the MC.

The close

Land the plane cleanly: names again (people forget who they saw), the one call to action that matters most tonight — next show's date, the class signup, the mailing list — and out on music. One call to action. Three is zero.

Then stand near the door. Half the value of hosting is being the person people can talk to on the way out; that conversation is where regulars come from.