Mike Birbiglia Quotes

I loved the idea [of improvisation], but I'd never taken any classes or practiced it.

I improvise whenever I feel it's important, or whenever I think that something's there. It's nice to have a script that's so well-written that I don't have to improvise. I mean, I used to have to re-write whole movies; this is kind of nice.

I approach music and acting the same way, through spontaneous improvisation. I never really try to rehearse anything, do it over and over, except when we're inside a take.

I like little collaborations where the other thing happens, where it's half-baked or it's improvised, and let's develop it together. "What do you want to wear? Do you have an idea?" All that's fun to do, and I like that, but it doesn't take anything away.

I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.

Improv is like writing. It's actually a different discipline to acting. It helps acting greatly, but it's completely different. It's the same side of your brain when you write as when you improv.

I believe that improvisation is really just a directorial tool. It's a writing tool. It's not so much that the actors get to say whatever they want, whatever pops into their head. It's an opportunity to write the last draft of the screenplay as you're working on it.

You are about to start the greatest improvisation of all. With no script. No idea what's going to happen, often with people and places you have never seen before. And you are not in control. So say 'yes.' And if you're lucky, you'll find people who will say 'yes' back.

If I have to write by a certain time, I can pull through, but usually I just let stuff happen, hanging out with comic friends - or bringing a basic idea on stage and seeing if it goes anywhere.

When you improvise on the spot, people are very reluctant to have soft moments or quiet moments or sad moments because they're trying to fill up the spaces. So they always go towards, "How come you're late?! You're supposed to have my shirt ready! You call this a dry cleaner?!" That's what happens. That's why improvising on the spot gets very dicey.

I never write anything down. I write onstage.

Improvisation is just writing in front of an audience.

When I'm improvising, I'm out of my head. I've done a lot of projects recently where there hasn't been a script. It's all been based on outlines. At first, that's terrifying, just because you don't have the words in front of you and you don't know how it's going to come out, but that's what's really exciting about it. You don't know what's going to happen. It really forces you to listen to the other people, and I think the most natural acting comes out of that.

Improvisation sometimes seemed more like jazz than acting, like verbal jazz, with the actors playing a theme back and forth, and then introducing another theme, incorporating it, somehow trying to work their way all together to a meaning of some kind, or at least a conclusion.

So the actual riffing came out of us just sitting there and doing it the way I think some people think we really did it, which is all spontaneously, and it really was.

I love improvising on the spot. I like that pressure.

Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.

I learned that the best way to work is to allow the scene to live on its own before making major adjustments, whether in rehearsal or on film.

I try to see interviewing as performance art, and just take it as it comes.

A lot of my best stuff is just ad libs on stage, and that's one thing that I've gotten back to at the live show.

An actor finds things in the moment with a director and other actors that you don't have time to hand-draw or animate with a computer.

Good actors, especially when they know their character, will come in and either tell you in advance that they have an idea, or in the middle of the rehearsal or the scene they'll let it loose and you go, 'Ah that's great.'

A certain rough-around-the-edges improvisational looseness - a sense of something coming together before your eyes, or not quite - may be one of the things that distinguishes performance art from theater.

All you're trying to do in an improvisation is get as much material as possible for the editing room.

To really be on stage and not know what you're going to say, and to be able to say something that makes people laugh, or do something that's sort of abstract or off the beaten path and have people connect to it by just putting your ideas together, that really makes me happy.