Marc Evan Jackson Quotes

Improv has been immensely beneficial to me as both an actor and a writer.

When I call 'Action,' I love to be surprised. And the actors I've been fortunate enough to work with always surprise me in the best ways.

Even when I was in school shows, in elementary school doing plays, I'd always go off book and start improvising.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

Work in the theater sharpened my verse and my cinema.

The theater, for me, has always been a place where I'm free to be more creative, a place to sharpen my tools.

In a way, as an actor, you do all the preparation and then you want to forget it and just play the scene. As a director, you can't forget it because somebody will remind you that you forgot something. But you can know your plan well enough that you still have a certain amount of freedom.

I always wanted to tell stories and act.

I feel when acting, I am sometimes overly self-conscious; I think, 'Going, no, don't, put your eyebrow back where it was and, you know, turn to the left.' You know, I'm sort of very consciously adopting this character. But with music, I don't know. I found it was a question of just closing my eyes and just sort of letting things come out.

I love improvisation.

I like doing a lot of research, and then you get there, you're in wardrobe, and then you're just reacting to what the other person is doing. The other actor is reacting to what you're doing, and it's this great back and forth. Because you've done all this research, you can use some of it or throw a lot of it out. You can get lost in it.

The lifelong goal of an improviser is to listen to what the other person is saying, taking it in, and responding.

Know your lines; otherwise, have an open mind because you want to get lost in the moment. When you have talented actors and directors to work with, then it's pretty easy to do.

I research every part thoroughly. I talk it out with my actor friends, but then I throw it all away when I get to the set. You have to be spontaneous.

With improv, it's a combination of listening and not trying to be funny.

I'm a dramatist, so I really always wrote and directed at the same time because when I wrote something, I always put it on its feet. So I'm in love with actors; I always loved actors.

The immediacy of improvisation is intoxicating, but there's an intimacy that you get that's very different when you're doing drama.

When you're writing, you're putting thought into what you want to express, and then you come up with it - it comes to you. When you're improvising, it's the same thing. You're writing. You just say it out loud right then, instead of saying, 'You think this might work?'

Something people say about acting is that acting is listening. But I think that writing is listening, too. That you really have to listen to what are they saying and what they're communicating to you. And so, a lot of it is just getting stuff down.

I think of myself as a theater animal instead of an intellectual animal.

I like to do as much improv as I can do.

It's just about being an entertainer; it's about having all those tools over the years to do all sorts: films, musicals, playing a bit of piano, running a quiz show - it just becomes part of the job.

For me, you have to do as much work as you can beforehand and, once you get on stage or set, throw it out the window because you need to be collaborative. You shouldn't have too many ideas about where it goes before you get into the room with the director and other actors.

I'm an improvisational actor. I like to do my own thing. But once in a while, I think you should have the self-restraint to let someone else dictate the story.

By definition, acting is improvisation, even if you follow the lines. You invent what you do, when you do it.