Quotes About Improv

I'm very interested in Comedia dell'Arte.

And I've always loved commercials. I like working out how to organically weave a brand's message into the writing process. It's like an improv show, where comics ask the audience to throw out a word and a skit is built around it.

Very rarely do I talk off the top of my head on stage. I'm not an improv guy. I'm a writer-guy who presents what he's written.

The Yale group was doing the Harold. So by our senior year we were trying to do the Harold. Again, we had no idea what we were doing. We had one guy in the group who was pretty experimental; he would kind of push us to do weird things. It was really fun, a great experience.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

I had been on this improv team at this really great improv theater. It's called iO now. It used to be called Improv Olympic. They have showcases for Lorne Michaels and other writers and people who work at 'SNL' usually about once a year, although I don't know if it always happens.

Theatre sports is the best improv training period.

Improv training allows you to get out of your head a little bit and take more risks, which is something I would like to continue to improve upon.

I never did improv professionally, but that was certainly in my training as an actor. I like it.

Improv is really fun but it's a lot harder to show people your work if they don't come to your show. Something about the energy doesn't transfer on tape.

I didn't have any terrible survival jobs. The main job I had before I was able to transition over to acting full-time was working at an after-school program at a middle school teaching improv and standup. So even when I had a regular job, I was still lucky enough to be doing the stuff I loved in some way.

We did sketch comedy, performed live improv, and then we made the transition to TV with 'Impractical Jokers.'

I love doing improv, and I swear by it, and I encourage people to take classes, and blah blah blah. But it's always been interesting how it doesn't necessarily translate to television.

I'm an actor first and foremost, who happens to do improv. I've also done sitcoms, I've done stage.

I cannot tell a joke. But I can do a situation, that it becomes a joke.

I prefer situational or character-based humor to gross-out gags and comedic set pieces.

Because I started my career in improv, performing with Second City and the Ace Trucking Company, I always enjoy being in situations where - as an actor - you have to think fast & be light on your feet.

Improv kind of goes hand in hand with what I do. I was on 'Reno 911!' for six years, and that was a completely improvised show.

So many of my characters have really crazy physicalities, so it's really fun to be able to say, like, 'I'm an elf who's the size of a dollar bill!'

You can't improv off of bad writing. Then you have to actually create your objective, which is really hard to do in an element without the skeleton to go off of.

A good sketch show, in my opinion, gets together a bunch of fun, funny people and collects their brainfarts, and shares them.

In college, I pretty much abandoned music and started performing with the school's improv and sketch troupe, and at some point, that became my permanent thing.

Maybe it's just my improv and sketch background, but I'm a lot more comfortable in a group. I like sharing focus and populating an ensemble.

I was always a big fan of Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner's '2000-Year-Old Man' sketch. I think it's one of the biggest influences on the podcast, definitely. You'd never say Carl Reiner was the funniest dude on there, because he's just teeing it up, but he knows what questions to ask to lead to great improv.