Comedy Improvisation Quotes

What holds you back in comedy is fear.

I'm not a comedian. I didn't study sketch comedy; my background isn't that.

I always think of comedy as being spontaneous, and yet everything about filmmaking is not spontaneous.

I do love situational comedy, clowning, and slapstick; I approach that with a lot of respect. The goofier you are, it doesn't mean you're going to be funnier.

It really helps a comedian to be an outsider.

Early on, I had a girlfriend come see me, and she was like, 'Yeah, it was good, but you were funny at a dining hall at the University of Maryland.' That's when I realized I was contrived. I was reciting jokes. So I really worked on - no matter what - sounding like I was just talking to the people.

I moved to New York and went to a performing arts college, but it wasn't until UCB that I started performing on the regular, figuring out how I'm funny, why I'm funny, and how to play with an audience.

I grew up with music hall and revue and was used to filling in the little gaps here and there to get bigger audience reaction.

When you've been doing comedy for forty years, you really do know most of the jokes. And even if you don't know a specific joke, you can pretty much guess what it's going to be.

I love Tim Minchin, Bill Bailey, and Hans Teeuwen, and I'm trying to synthesise elements of theatre into my show a little bit more.

It is not necessary to have a good sense of humour personally to do comedy well.

I stopped being interested in improvisation, and I continue to not be that interested in it. Comedians can do it on a different level because they have a goal, but if you're improvising something that's dramatic, there's not that much to be good at.

I remember doing a lot of comedy. I always loved that feeling when you do something on stage and you can feel the vibe of the audience turn, and they start laughing. It's how you know something's not right, and how to fix it, or how to make the moment stronger or funnier.

'Portlandia' is 100 percent improvised, and I came into this business not knowing anything.

I graduated from Improv Olympic. I used to do standup comedy.

I'm always doing what I can to look for and just feel out funny things that are happening in the scene and improvise off of them.

My first improv was Second City in Chicago. Before that, I worked at - with a partner, doing comedy sketches.

I did sketch comedy, but I never did improv. So I've just tried to learn as I go.

I had seen some shows at the Groundlings [legendary L.A. improvisational and sketch comedy troupe] and thought, "If I could ever do that, that would really mean something, that I have arrived." So I went through the program and said to myself, "I'm going to stay here until they kick me out." Seriously, they can ask you to leave at any point. Luckily, they never did that to me.

I started doing little amateur nights at the comedy club that was right next to the restaurant that I waitressed in when I was in university. I was probably 22 years old. I didn't do it with any intention of making a career out of it; I had just always valued comedy.

I did try when I wasn't doing the singing to do as much comedy as I could because I thought with Comic Relief you are duty bound to anyway.

Most of my comedy is accidental, I would say. If I don't know what the joke is, I'm going to play it better than if I do.

At first I had no skills in writing comedy. I didn't know what a joke was, but, as someone once told me, your emotions follow your intent. If you create the intention of starting a comedy act, slowly your mind starts adjusting and you arrive at a new emotional state.

The truth of it is that people are not going to want to go to improvisational theater if it's not funny. You can succeed in doing all the things you're supposed to do - be truthful to scene - and if it's not funny, I'm telling you that no one's gonna care.

I think comedy is the most difficult thing in the world, I really do.