Tag: Al Kelly

Gibberish — the sort that imitates a foreign language without using its actual vocabulary — is the physical comedy of words. Stripped of their dictionary meaning, words become physical actions, all sound and movement, intonation and rhythm. Gibberish has made for some great comic bits as well as some useful improvisational exercises. Viola Spolin, in her seminal work Improvisation for the Theatre defines gibberish as “meaningless sounds substituted for recognizable words so as to force the players to communicate by physicalizing” — and she includes several gibberish exercises.