Keith Johnstone Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The problem's always been to deal with the fear.Cos the fear is pretty . . . it ruins everybody really.

  Keith Johnstone

  Ruins, Problem, Deals

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  9 Copy quote

• 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

  Ideas, Garbage, Accepting

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Winning, Laughing, Waiting

  15 Copy quote

• As I grew up, everything started getting grey and dull. I could still remember the amazing intensity of the world I'd lived in as a child, but I thought the dulling of perception was an inevitable consequence of age - just as a lens of the eye is bound gradually to dim. I didn't understand that clarity is in the mind.

  Keith Johnstone

  Children, Eye, Perception

  Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.13, Routledge

  17 Copy quote

• Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

  Keith Johnstone

  Ideas, Truth Is, Psychotic

  Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.83, Routledge

  13 Copy quote

• Very hard to get an audience. So if you're going to fill the theatre, you can't just rely on old stuff.

  Keith Johnstone

  Theatre, Stuff, Audience

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  8 Copy quote

• I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it.

  Keith Johnstone

  Thinking, Intelligent, Brain

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Apology, Thinking, Stuff

  21 Copy quote

• 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

  People, Feelings, Stories

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  12 Copy quote

• When you want to have entertainment, it must be a waste of time. I don't like that. I don't like improvisation being pointless.

  Keith Johnstone

  Want, Waste, Entertainment

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  7 Copy quote

• Wherever you go it's the same fear. And the same protective devices. There is one big error I think and partly my fault which is that a lot of things are taught to beginners which you can cast off later on.

  Keith Johnstone

  Thinking, Errors, Beginners

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  5 Copy quote

• The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers.

  Keith Johnstone

  Stranger, Improvisation, Values

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  9 Copy quote

• Good impro can make you laugh, we love it, but soon the content is forgotten. Good scenes from The Life Game stay with you always. They haunt you.

  Keith Johnstone

  Games, Laughing, Forgotten

  14 Copy quote

• Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it; like Joan Littlewood with her theatre.

  Keith Johnstone

  Theatre, Driving, Middle

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  10 Copy quote

• I mean, in the foreword to Impro in Denmark is by Søren Iversen, who I taught long ago, he was a Danish director, after he left. He said he'd read about [Eugeny] Vakhtangov. I'm a fan of his. When he heard that Vakhtangov had lots of tricks, he thought this was very bad. But when he came to be my student, he realised it was very good to have a lot of tricks. You saw some this morning.

  Keith Johnstone

  Morning, Mean, Long Ago

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  7 Copy quote

• In my school, the library was forbidden. I was accused of turning on the radiator so that the [class]room was uninhabitable and the ceiling came down below; I'm pretty sure I didn't do it. But then we were moved to the library. And there was a really boring history thing, about the Spanish Armada: how could you make that boring?!So I reached my hand out, and slid a book off to read under the desk, and it opened at King Lear Act Four Scene Six. I was astounded. I'd never seen language like it. I was awestruck. I think that may be one reason why I got involved in theatre.

  Keith Johnstone

  Kings, Book, School

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Thinking, People, Feelings

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  5 Copy quote

• You can sort of trick people into being really good. Even if they didn't know anything.

  Keith Johnstone

  People, Being Real, Tricks

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  4 Copy quote

• Light entertainment means it mustn't teach you anything.

  Keith Johnstone

  Mean, Light, Entertainment

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Years, Class, Theatre

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  5 Copy quote

• I was crazy about silent comedy - in the old days, and crazy about Japanese movies.

  Keith Johnstone

  Crazy, Comedy, Silent

  Source: actorsandperformers.com

  4 Copy quote

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