Resources
Books worth reading
Reading about improv will not make you good at improv — but the right book at the right time changes how you hear your teacher. These are the ones that earn their shelf space, and what each is actually for.
The improv canon
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Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre
The book behind half the exercises your teacher uses. Status, spontaneity, masks — strange, brilliant, and still the deepest thing written about why improvisation works.
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Truth in Comedy
The manual of the Harold, from the people who invented long form. Short, direct, and the source of most of the vocabulary this site teaches.
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The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual
The most systematic curriculum in print: base reality, game of the scene, premise-based openings. If you take UCB-style classes, this is the textbook.
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Improvise: Scene from the Inside Out
The loyal opposition to rule-heavy improv teaching. Napier's advice — take care of yourself first, do something — has rescued more stuck improvisers than any rule ever has.
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The Improv Handbook
The broadest single survey: history, formats, exercises, and unusually honest chapters about fear and group dynamics.
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How to Be the Greatest Improviser on Earth
Modern, funny, and practical — a working teacher's book about actually getting better, including the parts (auditions, teams, plateaus) other books skip.
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Improvisation for the Theater
Where it all started: the games Spolin invented became the foundation of Second City and everything after. More a teacher's toolkit than a read-through book.
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Impro for Storytellers
Johnstone's second book — Theatresports, Maestro, and a hundred ways to keep scenes alive. Sharper on narrative than anything else in print.
On comedy
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Born Standing Up
The best memoir ever written about the craft of being funny on stage — ten years of learning, four of refining, and why he walked away.
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Sick in the Head
Decades of conversations with comedians about how the work actually gets made. A masterclass disguised as an interview collection.
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Poking a Dead Frog
Working comedy writers on process, rejection and craft — SNL, The Onion, sitcom rooms. Essential if you write sketch.
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The Comedians
A hundred years of American comedy history — vaudeville to podcasts — and where improv fits in the larger story.
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Bossypants
Second City to SNL to 30 Rock. Genuinely useful on improv's rules as life rules, and very funny about the business.
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Yes Please
UCB co-founder on improv, ambition and collaboration — the chapters on her Chicago years are a portrait of the scene this site's history pages describe.
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Then get on stage