Improvisational comedy

Improvisational comedy is comedy created spontaneously, usually through performers inventing dialogue and action in response to one another rather than following a fully predetermined script.

Yes, and: A performance principle in which participants accept an offered idea and add to it. Accepting and extending offers keeps improvised scenes moving instead of blocking them.
Viola Spolin: An American drama educator whose theater games helped establish modern improvisational acting. Her exercises became a foundation for improvisational comedy training.
Commedia dell'arte: An Italian theatrical tradition of masked characters, comic scenarios, and partly improvised performance. Its scenario-based acting offers a historical precedent for spontaneous comic performance.
Sketch comedy: Comedy performed through scripted, self-contained scenes or short pieces. Sketches may be developed through improv, but their final performances use fixed scripts.
Improvisational games: Structured performance exercises that impose rules or prompts on improvised scenes. Rules give performers a shared frame for generating comic material.
The Compass Players: A Chicago theater company founded in 1955 that developed politically engaged improvisational comedy. The company helped turn Spolin's games into a professional comedy form.
Theatrical improvisation: The creation of performance in the moment without a complete fixed script. Improvisational comedy is a comic branch of this broader performance practice.
Improvised music: Music created in real time rather than performed solely from a predetermined composition. Both practices depend on spontaneous choices made in response to collaborators.
Status transaction: A shift in relative social power between characters, expressed through behavior and interaction. Status changes create comic reversals without requiring a written plot.
Second City: A Chicago-based improvisational theater company founded in 1959. Its ensemble tradition brought improv-based comedy to stages, television, and film.

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