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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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Keith Johnstone
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: February 22
Actor
Dramaturge
Film Director
Improviser
Playwright
Theatrical Director
University Teacher
Devonshire
Values
Improvisation
Strangers
Stranger
Value
Playing
Public

More quotes by Keith Johnstone

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Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.
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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.
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The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination.
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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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If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing
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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'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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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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If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.
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 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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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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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.
Keith Johnstone
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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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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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The best laughs are on the recognition of truth.
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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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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I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.
Keith Johnstone
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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