Quote

I tell people not to do their best. I don't know when that started. Quite a while ago. Because I . . . when they're doing their best I don't get their best. So I try to persuade them to be average. Because if you're wonderful and you're average, you're still wonderful. If you're a bad improviser and you're average, you're what you are.

Keith Johnstone

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Keith Johnstone
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: February 22
Actor
Dramaturge
Film Director
Improviser
Playwright
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Devonshire
Quite
Wonderful
Tell
Stills
Still
Improviser
Best
Persuade
Trying
Average
People
Started

More quotes by Keith Johnstone

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Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied children.
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If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing
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If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.
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I left my theatre the Loose Moose almost twenty years ago, and I hardly ever go back. Sometimes I go back to do a Mask class. They're doing more of this than I was doing when I left. Often it's the same improvisers but they're older. And now, they don't care if the theatre's full or not.
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I'm not against work, I think work is great, I work a lot but if you want to play, the consequences must not be important.
Keith Johnstone
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I was crazy about silent comedy - in the old days, and crazy about Japanese movies.
Keith Johnstone
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If people had no fear, you'd hardly need to have to teach them. It's the fear that screws everything up.
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Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.
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Where if you're in a universe where you have to accept ideas, you'll never know if your partner wanted the garbage you're handing them. They have to take it.
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I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.
Keith Johnstone
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Suppose Mozart had tried to be original? It would have been like a man at the North Pole trying to walk north, and this is true of all of the rest of us. Striving after originality takes you far away from your true self, and makes your work mediocre.
Keith Johnstone
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The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers.
Keith Johnstone
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I don't even think you should tell the audience you're improvising. It's like an apology in case it's bad : 'we're just making it up' If the improv isn't better than the rehearsed stuff, then you should just rehearse it.
Keith Johnstone
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I see a great lack of stories around. I bought six literary magazines and looked through them to see what people were doing. There wasn't a story in them. They were all about how poetic the feelings of the author were.
Keith Johnstone
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Some people in this life think they're worth something, or that they have a right to things. I never thought I had a right to anything 'cause of the way I was broken as a child. And therefore I was sort of floating around and would get sucked into things.
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Trying to do better is trying to be better than you actually are, and I don't think you can do that.
Keith Johnstone
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In life most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. Bad improvisers block action often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.
Keith Johnstone
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My feeling is the moment the theatre is not full you have to do something else. But most people somehow think 'If we did it better, they would come'. No. They don't come.
Keith Johnstone
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Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe.
Keith Johnstone
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There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.
Keith Johnstone