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
People
Started
Quite
Wonderful
Tell
Stills
Still
Improviser
Best
Persuade
Trying
Average

More quotes by 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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I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.
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The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers.
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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.
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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.
Keith Johnstone
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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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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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Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it like Joan Littlewood with her theatre.
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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.
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If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing
Keith Johnstone
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Most people I meet are secretly convinced that they’re a little crazier than the average person. People understand the energy necessary to maintain their own shields, but not the energy expended by other people. They understand that their own sanity is a performance, but when confronted by other people they confuse the person with the role.
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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In a scene [where the improvisers must interact] without the letter S, the audience is waiting for you to lose - so they can laugh at you. Don't try to win.
Keith Johnstone
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If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.
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.
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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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 best laughs are on the recognition of truth.
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.
Keith Johnstone
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Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.
Keith Johnstone