 Hi everyone, my name is Lisa Smyoshi. I'm a member of the Pirates of Tokyo Bay, Japan's only bilingual improv comedy group Thank you. Thank you very much. And because I love improv so much. I'm gonna improvise my whole TED Talk So can I get two volunteers to help me up here on stage? If you want to raise your hand Wow, okay. They're really enthused. Yes, you got your question. Got your suit, please Can you come up to the stage? Hi, what's your name, sir? Hi, my name's Mike. Hi Mike. Hi. Hi Mike. What's your name? My name is David. Hi David, great to have you up here. You're so enthusiastic, ready with your microphones So that bit was staged, but what's gonna happen now is really improvised They're gonna have a talk about how you won't die on stage doing bilingual comedy through your favorite movie genres So if you want to shout out some movie genres that you like Underwater action film Okay her Romantic comedy her Musical Russian arts. I heard Russian. All right Okay, I'm not gonna repeat that Okay, I think I heard a lot so you guys ready to rock and roll. Sure. Yes. Okay. Let's take it here. I go Do you want to go out tonight, honey? Christine I've had a really long week. All I want to do is drink my beer watch the game and pass out with you Come on. We did that last week. Let's go out. Let's do something fun. Fine. Fine. Let's uh, let's go out to the bar and watch the game See I'm listening to your needs. I'm addressing your communication concerns Right, you're doing a great job. Honey. I don't think you're listening to me. I want to go out I want to have a fun night in town we could go see that bilingual comedy group your friend told us about her Bilingual comedy what what's that? you know It's where people in the audience they go to enjoy comedy from two different languages English and another one But don't need a really high level of fluency for that. Don't like don't worry about it Not everyone has both languages perfectly But if I don't understand what they're saying, I might not laugh. I might see someone die on stage What are you trying to say? I think you're missing the point Comedy is about communication, right? Whatever you say, right and communication has four basic elements, right? Absolutely Let me break it down for you. Okay, first you got the characters and their relationship You have the people in the conversation and the the dynamic the the heat between them precisely musical precisely But I still don't understand there must be something more there always is something more underwater action Then you have the objective Or what's trying to be accomplished, but what does that have to do with it pop comedy? It has to do with improv comedy because in every show there are two three or four performers Yeah, don't summer mother. I'm a senior. Hi Then next you have the location or the where So if I go to see a comedy show, what what does that mean for me? How do I know that they won't die on stage you won't die on stage because every show always has a crow The host gets the suggestions from the audience and they set up the characters from the audience suggestions And they use those suggestions for the objective So no matter what language English or another language you always know what's going on and you can enjoy the show you are so wise Take it back to the original scene Christine that was a heck of an explanation Right next time. I'll write it down for you. Yeah, we'll write and let's talk and let's just go. Okay Thank you so much. That was our point exactly. I mean Everyone says that bilingual comedy can't be done and shouldn't be done Like if you take a look at Google you get 830 million hits for comedy only 88 million for laughs So there's a lot of bad jokes out there You get about 24 million for improv comedy bilingual is less than 600,000. That's a seventh of 1% Klingon comedy gets 10 times more hits. That's not even a language So not doing bilingual comedy or improv because you might die on stage doesn't make any sense because the whole point of comedy is To take the audience to a new place a place. Maybe they didn't know that it even existed Yeah, and to do that You need to listen to the audience and connect with them and using crow does just that it guarantees that Even if you're performing in a foreign language to a multilingual audience of varying fluencies, you won't die on stage Thank you very much