bumpy post a year later can't sleep before worktime

One of the most important lessons I'm learning not only in improv but in my life is to assume my audience understands what I'm talking about. (Not that everyone in my life is my audience or anything.) (OH WHO AM I KIDDING) (but really not.)

Comprehension is weird. You can often understand a language without being able to speak it. Similarly, your audience can follow a narrative. Your audience remembers what you just said. Your audience has heard of things, has lived in the world. You do not need to perform improv in a vacuum. Humor that is purely referential is hoity-toity at best, cheating at worst, but a really good reference every now and again can flesh a scene out in a way that is so personal, because people have not only experienced whatever bit of culture you just grasped at but had a previous reaction to it, and is now going to be drawn in.

It's one of my worst habits to assume my audience means well but at heart is dumb dumb dumb. But it doesn't do anyone a service to work like that. I have to spin tirelessly at the height of all I have acquired culturally, spiritually, academically, streetedly, friendfully, fightfully, all of it in a mush. Junot Diaz does that damn well. The thing is too--if you really go all out--it inspires people to learn more anyway.