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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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If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing
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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.
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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.
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The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination.
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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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I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.
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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.
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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 was crazy about silent comedy - in the old days, and crazy about Japanese movies.
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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Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.
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.
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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.
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.
Keith Johnstone
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The best laughs are on the recognition of truth.
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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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 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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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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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