Free Association

If improv were a country, it would be a divided one. But not so divided that its citizens can't go back and forth. And not so divided that its rulers say bad things about each other. At least not in public. At least not to newspaper reporters.

One faction can be found here, at the Comedy Spot in Arlington, where players practice a style of improv called short-form.

They wear jerseys and sing the national anthem and break into teams to compete in a series of five-, six-, seven-minute games. They dance and mime and talk in gibberish and sometimes look like the most enthusiastic Pictionary players ever.

Audience participation is heavy, and down moments don't exist; it's improv for the instant gratification set.

"Some people are improvisers first and comic performers second. Most of our people are comic performers first, and improv is just their venue -- they're just goofy," explains Liz Demery, the club's owner.

The question people always ask Topher Bellavia is "How can you teach people to be funny?"

His answer is that he "absolutely cannot."

Bellavia used to be employed by a nonprofit group that took money from other nonprofits to give to a nonprofit that studied nonprofits. He was miserable and alienated, and one day he quit. Now he works in a consignment shop, but what he really does is improv and what he really loves is teaching other people improv.

But there are some people he can never seem to reach: "The ones who are like, 'Oh, I'm gonna be really good at this. I'm hilarious.' "

On the first night of every class he teaches at WIT, Bellavia has his new students conduct normal conversations. That's it. Just talk to one another. Talk honestly. "As soon as they reveal something about themselves, it's like, 'I can't believe this person said that on the first day,' " he says. "And the amount of laughter that happens is incredible."

Later he'll ask that they do more of the same when they take on characters -- be genuine and authentic, say what the character would really say, not what they think might come off as funny.

"It gets at what we call 'earned laughs,' not just falling-down humor. If you really show an honest relationship, it ratchets up the tension so that by the end . . . there's this point where there's this release, and the audience just roars," Bellavia says. "We want it to be funny, but we're willing to be patient to be funny."