Quotes About Improv

Breaking is when someone starts to laugh in the middle of a scene, which is so fun to watch.

I worked with the Groundlings, doing sketch comedy and improv at a theater here in L.A. It was my hobby, but I took classes and stayed passionate about it because it's what I wanted to do. It just fit. It takes a while before you can actually make money at it. I worked for years.

I was never in an improv group. But when I went to school, we would do it all day long with friends, not knowing what it was called.

Saturday Night Live

I will do comedy until the day I die: inappropriate comedy, funny comedy, gender-bending, twisting comedy, whatever comedy is out there.

I feel like most standup comedians do it the way I did it, where you just go to open mics and cut your teeth. Sketch and improv - they take a lot of classes. It's not unusual, the way I did it. It's just that, with standup, no one knows how to start because there's no book for it; there's no place you can really go.

I did improv for about 10 years professionally, and before that, I had done it in high school as part of an improv team. It was definitely a big part of my upbringing.

When I was at Upright Citizens Brigade, I would pretend to be a sad, drunk rapper.

'Upright Citizens Brigade' was a huge influence on us. And growing up we never missed 'Saturday Night Live.'

There was no Groundlings or Upright Citizens Brigade where I was from. Looking back on it, I was trying to do sketch comedy in my stand-up, which is still kind of what I am doing now. To go full-circle here, it's kind of like one-man sketch.

I got involved with an acting school and studied for a couple years. They used to have improv exercises that you would work on and you would do improvs.

Steve Buscemi is hilarious. He's really, really good with improv.

For 'Iron Man' I had to improv with Robert Downey Jr., which is like going up against LeBron in basketball. At one point he stopped and said, 'Can we give a round of applause to Olivia, because she's rocking it right now.'

What happens in improv is you create your own storyline.

If you watch 'SNL,' any time there's this thing with everyone singing, I'm, like, the one person who just has a straight line of dialogue because I can't sing to save my life.

One of the first exercises we did in acting class my freshman year was to stand in two rows, two lines facing each other as a class, and just make sounds and move in some completely nonsensical way out into the center of the room. Sort of make an idiot out of yourself, essentially, but to be okay with that.

I think doing The Improv is a little more ominous than doing a college campus because it was so different than anything I'd done.

That's what's so great, I get to play any character in the world. And I think that's one of the things that makes doing 'Comedy Bang Bang' or other improv podcasts so fun, as well as my own, is that you can really explore a character deeply for a long period of time that is nothing like yourself.

When I'm onstage, I'm acting.

I sort of write onstage. I'll throw an idea out there, like Home Depot, and just start talking about it.

If you can jump up onstage and make people laugh, shouldn't you also be able to inhabit a character?

When you're onstage with Chris Rock, anything can happen. He is one of the greatest comic geniuses we've ever seen.

I don't sit and write stand-up material; I come up with an idea onstage.

I absolutely loved improv! I felt very much at home being onstage. It freed me to be all sorts of people other than myself. It was an escape from myself, if you will. I still love that creative freedom of improv and making people laugh.