Do you dream of telling stories as funny as those told by Bill Cosby, Ron White, Margaret Cho, or Chelsea Handler?

A brighter bulb. ©iStockphoto/choness

Improv can up your laughter factor easily and quickly. And it doesn’t have to break the budget. Whether built on “yes and,” observing patterns, or the use of games, improv teaches tools so powerful they can help the least funny of us grow our funny quotient exponentially. In 2010, I took Intensive Improv 101 at the Upright Citizens Brigade in Los Angeles. By the end of the week, our class was able to build improv scenes based on an audience suggestion that prompted one-minute monologues in a class show. I was hooked. That class led to two other UCB improv classes, one on the Harold, and two more intensives at Second City Hollywood where I actually discovered I have a couple of characters lurking inside me.

Can’t make it to LA, Chicago, or New York? Both the UCB and Second City have books that can be your guide: The Upright Citizens Brigade Comedy Improvisation Manual, The Second City Almanac of Improvisation, or Truth in Comedy: The Manual for Improvisation.

Get a book, gather some friends, and before you know it you’re as funny as a monkey’s uncle!