Quotes About Improv

Life is improvisation. All of those [improv] classes were like church to me. The training had seeped into me and changed who I am.

Improv Everywhere tramples the lines drawn between spectacle and spectator, theatre and real life, public and private, performance and protest, and reclaims the streets for ordinary people.

I know the benefits of having a really great improv show are amazing because it was this one rare and fleeting thing that was incredible, but the risk just didn't appeal to me. I liked the control of sitting down and writing things.

I love improv so much. Listening. I think that's the key. When you improvise, you put a lot of pressure on yourself to create, and to be generating information, and trying to be funny, but if you just listen to what's being said to you, and then react honestly, you generally get better results.

When you are doing comedy, you need to get the right reaction from your partner.

In cartoons and in improv, anything can happen. You can be any character you want. The rules of real life don't always apply.

Open mics are a great way to rework your material to see what punchlines land best.

'New Girl' was a wonderful experience, but for seven years, we were shooting single-cam that is not handheld, that is traditionally shot, and they're asking you to improv, and you're on location. It's a real grind.

I've taught people in improv classes, then watched them move to Los Angeles to become Emmy winners and movie stars. That experience, for anyone wondering, is both super exciting and also makes you put a microscope on your own life choices. It causes you to question why you still perform stand-up in so many Brooklyn basements.

Woody Allen asked me to improv once. I said no.

I don't really write jokes down. I tend to have a premise that I work out and test on stage.

I think when a lot of actors hear improv, they think of throwing a line in or doing a slightly different take.

I try to play Hogan in an off-hand throwing lines way.

One thing that I struggled with was not corpsing when you're being thrown stuff that's absolutely hilarious by the other actors.

Improv is always seen as something that's funny, but worth a $5 ticket, $10 at most. I think ISC is one of those shows that is worth a real ticket price. It's hard-hitting and great and different every time.

Maybe she was really good at improv. I couldn't be certain she was nineteen or that her name really was Nora Halliday. Maybe she was like one of those sweaters with an innocent little thread hanging off of it: One pull, the whole thing unraveled.

I'm not a huge fan of improv theater or improv sports or whatever, because it still just looks like a tool. It looks like a technique to me.

I recommend anyone who wants to pursue comedy to go to The Groundlings.

Can we all admit that 'Parks and Recreation' is horrible? Is this something we would all know, but don't say? Maybe everything should not be improv'd.

I'll drive down the street, and I'll practice improv. I will sit there at a red light and see two guys talking to each other, and I will just start playing both characters. I can't hear them, but I can see their mouths moving, so I'll just put words in their mouths.

All of the Groundlings you meet, you're like, 'You're like me!' You were that kid in high school, too!'

The real art of what we do, at least back in the old-school days, was improv. If you were a great worker, you were able to adapt and that skill developed over time because of all the traveling and working in different areas. You learned how to read a crowd.

When I'm working with improv people, I give them the green light to just bring it and try things.

I started working right away as a kid, so I didn't have a chance to go to improv school or anything like that; I was already a working actor.