Alt comedy echoed the versatility of the spaces where it lived: its performers acknowledged debts to improvisational comedy, indie rock, spoken word, performance art, avant-garde film, and theatre; they delivered PowerPoint presentations, sang deadpan songs, argued with planted audience members, and told jokes about the nature of jokiness.
Sending a text message with a numeric keypad feels primitive and improvisational — like the way prisoners speak to each other by tapping on the walls of their cells in "Darkness at Noon," or the way the guy in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" writes a book.
The irregularity reinforces the work's organic associations but also speaks to an improvisational attitude that is almost musical.
Jamming as if he were an improvisational jazz musician, he often spoke his lines much quicker than he had the time to think them.
The magic in his playing grew out of his fluency in the grammar of tabla, the verbal corollary of the drummed beats, and his ability to translate spoken tabla into an improvisational, poetic music.
As Carmine drives his Chevy Blazer eastward, the three friends speak to one another in improvisational riffs fueled by references to film and television.
Her days are largely spent writing, but her narrative, with its improvisational checks and shifts, is as much spoken as written.
He speaks often of his background in improvisational comedy (more about that in a moment).
He takes a seat on the sofa next to his visitor and speaks in a stream-of-consciousness style, akin to a horn player's improvisational jazz.
Sending a text message with a numeric keypad feels primitive and improvisational like the way prisoners speak to each other by tapping on the walls of their cells in "Darkness at Noon," or the way the guy in "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" writes a book.
