Actor and comedian Lyric Lewis says she discovered her love of performance through improv.

In tonight's brief but spectacular, she reflects on finding her authentic voice in comedy.

My favorite thing about improv is, oh, it feels like playing as an adult.

The instant gratification of audience laughter, there's truly nothing like it.

It's just a launching point to like really take off and have fun.

So I'm originally from New Orleans, Louisiana. My mom's side is from the lower knife. My dad's

from the 17th Ward. As a kid, they called me motor mouth because I literally would never stop talking.

The basic rules of improv, for anybody,

but especially for a beginner, it's really to yes and.

And it's to try not to be funny.

I think the worst thing that can happen during an improv performance

is becoming self-aware.

Improv, like acting, is just reacting. When I was coming up, especially in, like, junior high, high school, and college,

I'd seen these women's career, Maya Rudolph, Jennifer Kooli, Sherry O'Terry, even like Will Ferrell.

They all had the groundlings in common.

I'm like, I want to go where these people who I idolize, where they got sharp.

Coming from a theatrical background and the drama department at Syracuse, it isn't like

super, super diverse.

I was kind of used to at that point being one of in a classroom setting, but still at the ground

links, it was very interesting that at first I was just doing the classes and I was just getting my training on.

And it wasn't until I got into writing lab.

My teacher was Karen Mariyama.

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