Improvisational Techniques Quotes

I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.

Since being diagnosed with Asperger's, I'd been working with an acting coach who has now become a good friend. We'd been trying lots of improvisational techniques to help me with some of the problems I experience. But it's a very slow process.

I've done lots of improv things but not a whole movie.

I'm very interested in the improvisation because one of the things I do is to help train scientists to communicate in a better way and more personal way when they're making a presentation, and I use improvisation to do that.

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.

As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.

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

We use improv in all kinds of fun ways. Sometimes it's to invent or discover new things, sometimes it's to weird out the other actors, and sometimes it's to create a sense of fun, to find new things inside the scripted lines.

I noticed that when it came time to improvise, my students would often make mistakes.

Improvisation in general is good, and improvising material into themes, turning the material into something codified and repeatable, taught me scenic structure and dramatic gambits that work and things that are appealing both as a performer and an audience member, like you know, what does "want" really mean in a scene, and how do you achieve your want, and how is that expressed, and how do you achieve closure? Those are all things that I learned performing at the cabaret after just doing the same scenes over and over and over again over the years, with my own ability to change.

I probably would've kept slogging on that same chord change, because there's a tendency to have that happen. You get into the cadence in your mind, and it's hard to make the kind of left turn that you probably need to keep it really interesting.

Composing is improvisation slowed down.

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

Improvisation is about finding the best joke or the silliest way to get something across. Improvising conflict is always fun because you can just go for it.

You've got to remember that improvisers are writers and actors and directors all simultaneously. That's what's happening in real time because you're writing on your feet, and you are acting out the words and you are directing what the staging is. You're deciding what staging is.

We have two different ways of working. One is completely unstructured where somebody just starts playing and somebody joins in and then the other person joins in, and something starts to happen. That's occasionally what happens. What more often happens is that we settle on some sort of - a few sort of structural ideas, like, "Okay, when I put my finger up, we're all going to move to the extremes of our instruments. So, that means you can only play either very high or very low or both. And we're going to stay there until I take my finger down.

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.

Bad improvisers block action, often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

I became immersed in the cult of improvisation. I was like one of those athletes trying to get into the Olympics. It was all about blind focus. I was so sure that I was doing exactly what I'd been put on this earth to do, and I would have done anything to make it onto that stage.

People always said, "I can't believe you made a movie that had no script." Yeah, but here's the thing, if you've got actors who are used to that, and that's what they like to do, they're all good improvisers and they're all people that feel comfortable doing that, then you know, it's not that big of a deal. It's what you do.

We would do improvisation together. And that in a way, had almost a "student-film side" where we'd be sitting there with Robert Downey and Jon Favreau and we're playing around, we're jamming around and we read those pages and in next couple of days that's what we do, so it was a good experience. Kind of frightening at first because you didn't quite know how it was going to work out, but they had some very talented people there so it worked out well.

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.

I'm aware of Yusef Lateef and Sun Ra and John Coltrane. My music cup runneth over. I try to encourage people: don't cut anything off, don't limit yourself. Give it a good listen: you might find something in that goofy Sun Ra noise, that dissonance. Before I learned 'official musicality' - which you should avoid at all costs - I listened to some Sun Ra and Yusef Lateef and John Coltrane and that's where 'Journey to the Center of the Mind' came from. When you intentionally and aggressively pursue musical communication with those powerfully impactful musical geniuses, you will pick up something.

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.

Practice your improv more than learn your lines. 'Cause there's no way you'll be able to learn all those lines in a short time. You have to realize what you know and what you don't know - and what you don't know, just come up with three alternate lines or improv that you can put in that spot.