On November 4, in a Report titled : "Opera meets Commedia Dell'Arte:Two Italian Rennaissance Art Forms Merged " I was impressed with the "merger" effort.

But what was I thinking? I completely overlooked further giving Commedia Dell'Arte
it's full due by pointing out that it is incontrovertibly the origin of "Improv", the Contemporary Improvisational  theatre.

To put it simply, improv is live comedy with no scripts, no predetermined characters and locations. These are all volunteered by the audience.

Improv's origins can be traced back to 16th-century Italy's commedia dell'arte, troops of roving performers who utilized unscripted entertainment or an improvised dialogue within the framework of an established concept, that flourished during the European Renaissance.

Many silent film makers like Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton used this approach in the making of their films, developing their gags while filming and altering the plot to fit.

Modern theatrical improvisation began in Chicago in the 1950s with the first theatre games of Viola Spolin (Paul Sills' mother) and British-Canadian Keith Johnstone, and  are generally regarded as the two major forces responsible for re-establishing improvisational theater in the 20th century.

In the 1950s, Paul Sills and Del Close were involved in co-founding the Compass Players, a Spolin-influenced Chicago improv group that led to the formation of the Second City company. John Belushi, Bill Murray, Martin Short, and John Candy would later study and perform at Second City.

Close, who later formed the ImprovOlympics (boasting such alumni as Mike Meyers, Chris Farley and Adam Sandler), is best known as the person responsible for establishing "The Harold," a landmark long-form improv technique where themes are established, characters introduced and scenes play off one another.

Most recently, it drew on the popularity of "Saturday Night Live" and ABC's "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"

Other successful groups have been the Annoyance Theater (Chicago), The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre  (New York), Comedy Sportz (international), The Groundlings (Los Angeles), Dirty South Improv (Chapel Hill).

Improvisational comedy as a stand-alone, theatrical artform falls generally into two categories: shortform and longform. Shortform improvisation consists of short, unrelated scenes almost always driven by a predetermined game, (e.g., party quirks, world's worst). In shortform games, which take from two to ten minutes, the performers attempt to create a comprehensible scene while conforming to the specified and possibly restrictive rules of the game. Wit and speed are favored. Many shortform games first created by Spolin are still performed to this day.Whose Line is it anyway? includes a number of common shortform games.

In longform improvisation, the timeframe is considerably broadened and predetermined games are ruled out. The performers attempt to create a wholly improvised play, anywhere from 25 minutes to two hours at the extreme, which evolves organically from first scene to last. Some longforms are narrative while others focus on character development, exploration of relationships, or the extrapolation of themes and ideas. There at least 13 basic long forms.

"The difference between short-form and long-form," is explained, "is the difference between a song and a symphony.

In the 1990's, almost simultaneously, improv was infiltrating higher education, with the inception and explosion of college troupes.