Quotes About Improv

Working on a sitcom and improv improves your comedic chops. If you do it long enough, the one thing you learn to do is listen to the other characters.

I come from an improv background, so the one thing I know when I'm doing 'Chozen' is that whatever he's doing at that exact moment is the only thing he's thinking about, and he will do it until he's conquered it.

I didn't do improv in college, I never performed, I didn't do theater either. I was in student government, I was a history major.

I started off at the Second City in Chicago... It's an improvisational theater that ostensibly does social and political satire, but when I was there, we generally didn't. We did character work, and we did just the silliest things we could think of. We weren't all that concerned with, you know, changing the world through mime.

I was always just like, 'Standups are making it up.' A lot of people have that myth about standup. And so it wasn't until I was in college for theater school in Boston that I realized I can actually start going to open mics and figuring this out.

I come from 'black-box' theater, where basically, you make your own adventure out of nothing.

I acted out a lot. I was very nerdy. I was very isolated, which I made up for by kind of talking and trying to entertain people and get them to like me, so I did theatre and improv in high school and college, but always as a hobby.

I came from the Groundlings Theatre in L.A., and there, you're guaranteed to at least try something out in front of an audience. At 'SNL,' only the best stuff gets picked, and it's taught me a very defined language of comedy. You learn the structure of a joke, which is not something I was very good at beforehand.

From there, I tried out for a community theatre play, joined an improv group... it all started opening up.

allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.

This kind of management system clearly has its risks. It meant Van Riper didn't always have a clear idea of what his troops were up to. It meant he had to place a lot of trust in his subordinates. It was, by his own admission, a messy way to make decisions. But it had one overwhelming advantage: allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves constantly turns out to be like the rule of agreement in improv. It enables rapid cognition.

Life is unfair and improv is a great metaphor of that.

I take improv classes. Improv is something I can use in any aspect of life.

I never went to acting school, so improv was my training. Just being quick on your feet helps in everyday life.

UCB has been compared to a cult and a pyramid scheme, and it's all that stuff.

I joined an improv comedy group. Ours was named 'Quick Fire!' with an exclamation point. It was when I auditioned for that team and got on it and felt like... I'll just say I felt like I was good at it.

I've been spending quite a bit of time writing, acting, and making films. Because I'm doing all this extra writing, acting, and creating short comedy skits with my friends in improv shows, I feel like that's really filled out my confidence on the mic.

Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.

Chris Parnell's a genius, so he'd be amazing on 'Who's Line.'

I belong to an improv group, I play cello, I have these phases - fencing, tae kwon do, baseball, ice hockey, boogie boarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.

When you watch Robin Williams, you can see a lot of Jonathan Winters. Robin is the first one to admit that; he worshiped Jonathan Winters.

As they say, there are two rules in improv: Never say no, and never ask why. When another actor asks 'Why?' or says no to something you're suggesting, then it's very clear that they're putting the onus on you, because they're not comfortable with it themselves.

I'm a storyteller, and I was an actor, so I have a fairly thin grip on reality to begin with.

I remember being upset because I was finally legal to drink in Canada, and I decided to throw that all away and move to America, where I had to wait another two years. I came here to do improv and to try to join the Groundlings.