Quotes About Improvisation

The main point then is that an actor should not try to acquire any kind of recipe or build up a box of tricks. This is no place for collecting all sorts of means of expression.

I'm always excited to work with actors.

I've never had a plan. You look for different actors you want to work with or different subjects you want to explore, or sometimes it's just a momentary fancy.

The way I work on music is that I go into my studio, and I start playing music, and I see what happens, and... I never think about it.

All the truly great stand-ups say, "I go onstage, and I work on jokes. The inspiration will happen while I'm doing my work." To me, in the end, the surest thing is work.

I never work from the script. I get the script more or less.

When somebody would come in with a sketch that was not so good, you figured out in a room how to make that sketch work.

With me, it's much more a matter of accepting whatever happens, accepting all these elements from the outside and then trying to work with them in a sort of free collaboration.

Even if you know a character really well, there's no formula for what jokes will work and what won't.

You work with stand-up comedians or you work with somebody in theater, you work with somebody from Star Search or Survivor or a kid, it constantly changes how you play with people.

When you work without a script, you are in a sense working in a much more improvisational way than when you are prepared totally.

Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work.

I never outline. I don't work from an outline. I have no idea where the book is going. I mean, even two-thirds of the way through, I don't know how it's going to end.

I don't read books on how to write screenplays just because I'm stubborn. So it's all sort of made up.

I like to think that we've got a plan, so let's stick to it. That said, once we've stuck to it, we're allowed as much improvisation as anyone cares to indulge themselves in.

If you are playing repertoire material, you're stuck. There's not huge amounts you can do.

Scenes change all the time. Scenes will change while you're shooting them, and you just have to roll with it 'cause that's what makes it funny. It's not being stuck in your character and how you're gonna do something, but to react to other people and to really have a real-life conversation.

I normally write on acoustic guitar, although piano is the instrument that I actually studied. Occasionally, I'll write on the piano or sometimes with no instrument at all.

I kind of connected the dots, like, 'Oh, we're just saying stuff. We're just saying things that make sense, so let's just say them like you say them in real life.' It was my first and one of my only acting lessons 'cause I never really studied acting.

I'm a spontaneous actress, not a studied one.

My comedy doesn't come from any calculations and studies.

Working improvisationally in my studio with dancers, it's completely different. We don't have any starting point; we don't have an end point. We don't have anything we are trying to show or do. The picture evolves from nowhere.

I just go in the studio and write on the spot and see what comes out.

Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually - mostly - the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter.