I actually think it's helped me as a writer to have to act. It's only when you actually start putting yourself out that you appreciate the anxiety that comes with having to try to sell a line, or with trying to own a character.
The beautiful thing about acting is that you can go your whole life if you stay current and you stay fresh.
Growing up playing jazz and improvising has had a big impact on me, and it translates into my music.
The audience will teach you how to act and the audience will teach you how to write and to direct. The classroom will teach you how to obey, and obedience in the theatre will get you nowhere. It’s a soothing falsity.
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.
Central to being an actor is pretending, and the adventure of it all. That's why you become a junkie for different kinds of situations.
It’s like a language. You learn the alphabet, which are the scales. You learn sentences, which are the chords. And then you talk extemporaneously with the horn. It’s a wonderful thing to speak extemporaneously, which is something I’ve never gotten the hang of. But musically I love to talk just off the top of my head. And that’s what jazz music is all about.
Improvisation helps because you get what's on the page and you make it a little more palatable to your tongue. And that's the beauty of creating and being spontaneous. That's the way I love to work.
The problem with improvisation is, of course, that everyone just slips into their comfort zone and does sort of the easy thing to do, the most obvious thing to do with your instrument.
I'm interested in doing anything and everything that I can to squeeze the creativity out of my brain. I guess I'm kind of a performance rat, that's what I want to do, I love being on stage if I'm not on a set. I just love putting creativity into a performance.
You have to practice improvisation, let no one kid you about it!
I'm improvising all the time. Everything I do is improvised. On the piano, at least.
I think in theater it demands that you say the same words every night and make it feel fresh and new. Improv demands that you be operating at the highest level of your creativity intelligence. So these two skills are both very important but I've seen people who are very skilled at one area struggle with the other. Either improvisers feel constrained by having to say the same thing over and over again or people who are really good at doing scripted work feel intimidated and exposed doing improvisation.
The biggest thing that comes out of improv that gets built on is just character traits. You know, for me the singing was born out of improv.
I did so much theater, where everybody I worked with was so much better than me, that I just sort of learned.
Jam Cruise is actually a comfortable place for me. My jamming skills and my improvisational skills have improved immensely as I've gone more solo, because I've had this opportunity.
Once I had defined myself as a compositional drummer, I thought, "Well, I want to be an improvisational drummer."
I insist that they do what they became actors to do. I want them to create something and not just hit marks and say words. So they all love that because they're playing. It's called playacting. Their contributions are not only welcomed, but are accepted and used.
As I got more confident, I was able to let actors improvise, and do long takes. It's 10%, 5% you learn and experience. The rest you just have or you don't have.
I have a lot of respect for people who are great at ad-libbing, and for writers and directors who are able to create a scene in which that works.
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.
Comedy holds the greatest risk for an actor, and laughter is the reward.
The study of acting consists in the main of getting out of one’s own way, and in learning to deal with uncertainty and being comfortable being uncomfortable.
Sometimes you can fix something that went wrong with what you do next and make it better than it would have been if it hadn't gone wrong, as an improviser, and I do know how to do that.
[Being a good comedian] is a skill, but it's also a weird thing that only certain people can do. I always equate it to surgeons and how they can just cut people open and operate. Certain people are just wired differently, and I feel like comics are the same way.
