Geddy Lee Quotes

The apparatus has to serve our improbability and improvisation. Being good and playing the songs is not enough.

So much of making movies is about discovery on the day, what you're figuring out. If you know everything going in, then it's not worth doing - it's already done.

With theatre, you have to be ready for anything.

You can't plan everything - if I did a performance exactly how I rehearsed it, it would be so boring.

I'm not able to go in with an act that I use month to month year to year all the time. It's constantly evolving and changing and that keeps me on my toes but certainly adds to the challenge.

My methodology is not knowing what I'm doing and making that work for me.

This band makes sure that we have whole sections of stuff that are free form so that they don't know what we are doing next, that is the fun part of playing. You are playing something that you haven't ever played before.

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.

I think probably with any performer, but maybe with rock music especially, the audience wants to see the singer being real, and exploring, and not doing a rehearsed routine, so I'm just constantly looking for new things to try. I'm really curious out there, and my curiosity has led me into all kinds of bizarre situations.

I'm not a planner. I like to try something different, to just see what happens.

I like to improvise; I think it's just a healthy thing to do, to keep everything loose and fun.

I ask all my actors to do two things: I ask them to fail for me, and I ask them to surprise me.

I improvise a lot and try something new every couple of years.

I try new stuff every time I perform. I have steps I do that I know are definite, and stuff I can make up right then and there and then forget.

In the performance sense, I find that interpretation is improvisatory in nature. You can go anywhere with an interpretation on any given day.

I'm flying by the seat of my pants, never creating with a thought to what's up ahead!

I studied structured improv, where you start from one position and see where it takes you. I like spontaneity. If you set yourself up to do the same thing every night, you may not connect as well to a different audience.

Rigidity is the enemy of acting. And I think that people who stay up all night focusing on every beat they're going to do the next day always end up getting screwed.

You can't make a mistake when you improvise.

The biggest threat to a better life is the desire to keep the future under control - to make the world predictable by reining in creativity and enterprise. Progress as a neat blueprint, with no deviations and no surprise, may work in children's cartoons or utopian novels. But it's just a fantasy.

I've never followed a list in my life, and that's probably what has created so much nervous energy in my body.

I like to improvise.

That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something.

I think there are actors who are like, 'Okay, what am I doing, how am I doing it, what's the appeal? Tell me what to do, what are the exact lines from the script? Okay, I got it.' I am not that way. I would be a terrible bus driver. I'd want to be like, 'Oh, let's take this side road! Let's see what happens when we go down this back alley.'

As an actor, I'm always up for exploring and trying new things.