Quotes About Improvisation

If I'm soloing, I usually try to start with a theme, which will often stem from the blues.

My stand-up shows don't really have a theme but do have an interactive element to them.

Judgment hinders imagination.

Years ago when I was still in the field we ad this technique for dealing with problems we weren't exactly sure how to solve. We called it S-W-A-G." "What's that stand for?" "Scientific-Wild-Ass-Guess..

We do not need to understand other people and their customs fully to interact with them and learn in the process; it is making the effort to interact without knowing all the rules, improvising certain situations, that allows us to grow. —MARY CATHERINE BATESON, PERIPHERAL VISIONS

The improvisational ability to lead adaptively relies on responding to the present situation rather than importing the past into the present and laying it on the current situation like an imperfect template.

We need to think of imagination not as the faculty that produces visual or auditory images but as a combination of novelty and luck.

jiggered-together adaptations.

The trouble with this country is that it's a mass of anarchists and improvisors governed by bandits. pg. 164

In life, most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. All the improvisation teacher has to do is to reverse this skill and he creates very 'gifted' improvisers. Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.(p.115)

Improvisation comedy is a wonderful example of the kind of thinking that Blink is about. It involves make very sophisticated decisions on the spur of the moment without the benefit of any kind of script or plot. That's what makes it so compelling and — to be frank — terrifying.

I had acting teachers, and one of the things that was encouraged was to keep it fresh, to be spontaneous. That's the magic of film often.

Comedians act every night on stage, so they have great performing chops. They especially know how to play themselves, which is how we set 'Teachers Lounge' up.

You had to account for every move, arrival or exit. In the world there was a conspiracy against improvisation. It was only permitted in jazz.

We give to others only peripheral improvisations. The plots, and themes of the music, like the plots and themes of our life, never alchemized into words, existed only in a state of music, stirring or numbing, exalting or despairing, but never named.

A game: say something. Close your eyes and say something. Anything, a number, a name. Like this (she closes her eyes): Two, two what? Two women. What do they look like? Wearing black. Where are they? In a park. . . . And then, what are they doing? Try it, it's so easy, why don't you want to play? You know, that's how I talk to myself when I'm alone, I tell myself all kinds of stories. And not only silly stories: actually, I live this way altogether.

was never bound by the narrow expectations of others. But when we examine Jesus' changes of plans more closely, we discover an unmistakable pattern: Jesus' changes of plans almost always took him in the opposite direction of his own privilege. The purpose of every one of Jesus' improvisations was the restoration of image bearing in places where it had been lost. He exercised his power to interrupt in others' interests, never his own.

Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen.

not sure what to do about her "date." Then she simply pulled a name out of the air. "With Winston Churchill," she replied, taking the chance that Liz wouldn't know who he was. Apparently she didn't. "Yeah, he goes to high school," continued Kristy nonchalantly, getting into her story. "A sophomore. Football player … Me? I'm in seventh…. Yeah, I know.

One can use standard principles and textbooks in educating people for law, medicine, architecture, chemistry or almost any other profession—but not for the theater. For, in most professions, every practitioner uses the same tools and techniques, while the actor's chief instrument is himself. And since no two persons are alike, no universal rule is applicable to any two actors in exactly the same way.

The structure of a jazz performance is, like that of the New York skyline, a tension of cross-purposes. In jazz at its characteristic best, each player seems to be—and has the sense of being—on his own. Each goes his own way, inventing rhythmic and melodic patterns which, superficially, seem to have as little relevance to one another as the United Nations building does to the Empire State. And yet the outcome is a dazzlingly precise creative unity.

Her playing which had been superb became merely correct. It was necessary to suggest a certain sloppiness, the playing of something that hadn't been written. Computer-made music-synthesized Blue Moon- presented same problem. Random elements introduced.

Even if you're improvising, the fact that beforehand you know certain things will work helps you make those improvisations successful. It really helps to have a certain amount of knowledge about musical structure.