Quotes About Improv

I don't write anything. It's all done onstage, which is why I always tell younger comics that they just have to go do it. You have to get up, talk, and take a thought or a word and just expound, and you find it in there. I don't sit down and write.

I had a teacher who recommended I take improv classes in Chicago - I'm from Evanston, Illinois - so I did improv classes at Improv Olympic, and that kind of opened me up.

sometimes life more closely resembled improvisational comedy than strategic planning.

Comedy chose me. I always had this urge to be silly that I couldn't control. I remember my father having me read 'The Three Little Pigs' to him, and I would improv all around the story, like when one pig's house got blown over, he put on his gym shoes and took off.

On family trips and vacations, I remember walking around with my little sister and making funny songs on the spot.

My rule of thumb is to always do what's on the page first. Then you can talk to your director about playing with it. Improv frees me up in a character, but I would be mortified if the writers who agonized over their words assumed I thought my improv was more valuable.

What brought me to L.A. was work! I moved to Chicago after college - I went to Kalamazoo - did my nerd thing, graduated, and moved to Chicago to pursue improv.

If you do a scene and you really like a character in it or a premise in it to write it down and to work on it so that you can have five or six characters that you can pull out in an audition.

I do lots of crowd work in my set, because I enjoy writing material through riffing and conversation.

I'm not a comedian. I don't do stand-up. I don't tell jokes. I'm a comedic actor, and approach my work that way. The comedy comes through the character.

If there is one thing BP's 'watery improv act' made clear, it is that, as a culture, we have become far too willing to gamble with things that are precious and irreplaceable, and to do so without a back-up plan, without an exit strategy.

I can legitimately say without being arrogant that there's probably a stretch where I was one of the better teachers of improv in the country.

My prayer is improvised - though like some standard jazz performance, the improv happens within pretty strict parameters - and asks for nothing.

If something strikes me as funny, I'll put it in my performance.

Molly Shannon and I used to always talk about that we really felt strongly that we were comedic actors, that we weren't comedians. You just played things real and the comedy came out of the context.

L.A. gets a bad rap, but that's not the case. Everybody's like a real family out here. I think a lot of that comes from UCB Theatre, Amy Poehler, Matt Walsh, Matt Besser, and Ian Roberts. They're really funny, but they're also upstanding people.

I remember on 'Dr. Katz,' there was no script really at all. There were just scene outlines.

When I came into improv, it was almost like an outsider art form.

A lot of the comedic work Ive done has been over-the-top, sketchy stuff.

Stand-up is an amazing art form, I think, because it's all about you having complete control of the situation, but absolutely none.

I was 18 when I did 'The Amanda Show,' and I was 19 when I did 'MadTV,' and I was in way over my head. I was just sort of a goof who could do impressions of WB stars - speaking of the Dawson Van Der Beek era - and it was overwhelming. I don't think I've learned more faster in my life than when I worked on 'MadTV.'

Well, I loved variety in television, I loved sketch comedy. At 'Saturday Night Live,' I stayed almost seven years.

Sketches have characters, exits, entrances and are vastly different.

If you look at vaudeville in theaters vamping between acts, it was always jokes written and banter in the moment.