Your First Line Shouldn’t Be The Funniest

There’s a bit of a trap when it comes to performing premise-based improv. It goes like this: You hear something SUPER fun and shiny in the monologue. You craft an incredible opening line in your head. You step out on stage and deliver it – and the audience laugh. What a feeling! You bask in the glow of being a fantastic comedy writer, destined for SNL fame.

Unfortunately, that first laugh ends up being hard to beat! And getting a huge laugh at the top then limping your way to an edit does not make for a great scene.

It’s a common problem. Many premise-based scenes start out with a very funny idea, but it’s an idea that can’t be sustained for the whole scene. You’ve tweaked the initiation on the backline to cause maximum surprise on the delivery … but inadvertently tilted your character from “playable” into what we might call “crazy town”.

The character is too wacky, the situation is too contrived: it’s a funny “concept”, but not very easy to play – or to watch.

Let me share an example I’ve just made up. Someone in your team has given a lovely monologue, mentioning how they used to work as a lifeguard – and they found it quite a lot of pressure.

You’ve been mulling it over, and decided the scene is going to be about a lifeguard who sees everything at the council leisure centre as a matter of life and death. You then spend some time thinking, “What is the single funniest thing I could say at the top of the scene to illustrate this?”

Your opening line: “Simon, I’ve just seen some guys splashing when they shouldn’t be… and I’m calling the police. Hello 999, send over a SWAT team… NOW!”

It gets a big laugh. The audience can see the connection between the opening monologue and the first line of your scene. But your scene partner is a bit stuck: where to go from here? You go to heighten the emotion and realise … you already went pretty extreme with your reaction. (What’s bigger than calling in a SWAT team in your first line? Pulling your own gun? So by line 3 you’re already waving a gun around in your improv scene?)

My advice? Start interesting, and build to hilarious. Remember the basics: establishing a believable world, with believable relationships we can invest in. Give us the who, the what, the where. The “premise” will still be there in a few lines’ time, when you can really lean into the funny idea in a way that gives you somewhere to go.

Perhaps in our imaginary scene you simply open with: “Simon, buddy… I just saw some people splashing and I’m worried something bad’s going to happen.” Or “Thank goodness your shift has started, Simon, I can’t keep the watch alone!” You can build to calling in a SWAT team, or thinking the towels are looking shifty, or whatever fun game emerges.

In a premise-based show, a good scene initiation should be funny. In fact, it almost definitely will be, if you’ve spotted what’s interesting and shiny from your opening. But it shouldn’t be the funniest bit of the whole scene – and it should always give you (and those in the scene with you) room to find out more.