Improv Skills Quotes

To me, if people really want to improvise, get into classes and learn.

I know how to have a conversation, but I've never done improv. I've never taken improv classes.

If you're a good improviser, you improvise well enough that people think that you're doing a sketch.

The hardest part about improv is getting the audience to relax and enjoy themselves, because most improv is not very good, and the audience is nervous for the performers the whole time. Not that they don't even like the show, but they feel bad for the performers.

We use improv in all kinds of fun ways. Sometimes it's to invent or discover new things, sometimes it's to weird out the other actors, and sometimes it's to create a sense of fun, to find new things inside the scripted lines.

Doing improv really got me started in my whole career.

It scared me to death to think about improv, but I got hired for a year at Second City in Chicago, which made me nervous, but I found I could improvise. Then I was in a group called the Ace Trucking Company, which we'd do, like, a half hour set of material, then open up for improvisation.

Sometimes you have to kind of keep proving that you're improvising. That's the game, or the goal, of long-form TV improv, is that you have to kind of keep reminding and showing people that you're improvising, because they won't believe you really.

When you do improv, you're everything. You're a performer, writer, and director, because you're moving the scene in the direction you want it to go, you're making it up as you go, and you're acting it.

I was 18 when I did 'The Amanda Show,' and I was 19 when I did 'MadTV,' and I was in way over my head. I was just sort of a goof who could do impressions of WB stars - speaking of the Dawson Van Der Beek era - and it was overwhelming. I don't think I've learned more faster in my life than when I worked on 'MadTV.'

I can legitimately say without being arrogant that there's probably a stretch where I was one of the better teachers of improv in the country.

I took an improv class in 2005 in Chicago at ComedySportz, which was short-form, more of a games-based improv. I remember it being real fun and helping with my stand-up. If I did an improv class, and then I did stand-up later, I felt looser on stage and more comfortable.

Nothing is better than showing up twice a week, acting like a 12 year-old for two hours, and then going home.

I love doing improv, and I swear by it, and I encourage people to take classes, and blah blah blah. But it's always been interesting how it doesn't necessarily translate to television.

I started doing improv in college, and I really liked it.

I do believe if we opened up a comedy theater in a city, that we're going to be able to teach improv better than whoever's there already. In general, I think I could say that.

I think when a lot of actors hear improv, they think of throwing a line in or doing a slightly different take.

[At Boston College] I started working on the kinds of skills that you need for comedy. It's about being creative and learning to use your gift for being able to let loose and be very unself-conscious. It took me time though before I was really able to get comfortable doing that.

I think the improv also helps with the imagination of dealing this person across from me who's not physically there. When you do an improv scene, you're usually working on a blank stage and creating the props and creating the environment.

The improv stuff, that's always surprising so a lot of times that's really funny.

Improv is not something I had a lot of experience with, because for a long time, my only experience in front of a camera was all television, which is pretty rigid script-wise, except for the occasional scene where you toss in an ad-lib just to elongate something.

It's so much harder to make a living off improv. Improv is so rarified and for such a specific audience.

Well, actually, the Second City thing came about because I was taking a few improv classes there. I thought that the improv classes would help with my wrestling career, which it has.

I love sketch; it's my favorite form. But if it's all improv, they're either very good, and it's annoying how good they are, and it makes you feel bad, or they're not too good; then you're sweating for them.

I knew Steve Carell because of Little Miss Sunshine, so I felt very comfortable with him. Maybe he always does it to guest stars, but I felt as though he was being particularly funny with me, and particularly stretching the boundaries of improvisation. He's such a comic genius. I hate to use that word, because everyone throws it around, but Steve Carell is channeling something.