Words by Stephanie Kocer | Video by Rachel Collins | April 22, 2015<\/p>\n

Four actors stand on stage waiting to play a game. They sway from side to side and look down at their feet. They\u2019re excited and anxious. They don\u2019t know the game yet, and they don\u2019t know what they\u2019ll say. Even so, they\u2019re about to perform. It\u2019ll be something new, something they\u2019ve never done before \u2014 and will never do again.<\/p>\n

Which is the whole point. Improv is a form of comedy that\u2019s made up on the spot. There are no rehearsed scenes or written dialogue. There\u2019s just a \u201cgame\u201d for guidance and the word go. Which means improv can happen anywhere. And it does. While stalwarts like The Second City<\/a> in Chicago and the Brave New Workshop<\/a> in Minneapolis have been preaching the gospel of improv for decades, a slew of new improv companies, including Des Moines\u2019s\u00a0The Last Laugh Comedy Theater<\/a>, are popping up all over the Midwest and bringing improv to the spotlight in major cities.<\/p>\n

Urban Plains sat down with Last Laugh comedians to talk about the growing improv scene in Des Moines.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Last Laugh Comedy Theater in Des Moines is helping grow an improv scene in the Midwest. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"video","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[138,242,243,244],"yoast_head":"\n