Keith Johnstone Quotes:

If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else.

Topics: Ideas, Mouths

The best laughs are on the recognition of truth.

Topics: Laughing, Recognition

If you believe you're good already, you don't need to do extra stuff to impress us. Your best work comes when you're absorbed; because then your ego is away.

Topics: Believe, Ego, Needs

Every time you go the way the audience expects, they'll think you're original. People laugh with pleasure at the obvious.

Topics: Thinking, People, Laughing

None of us really grow up. All we ever do is learn how to behave in public.

Topics: Growing Up, Grows, Behave

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.

Topics: Teacher, Children, Teaching, Playfulness

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. Many 'well-adjusted' adults are bitter, uncreative, frightened, unimaginative, and rather hostile people. Instead of assuming they were born that way, or that that's what being an adult entails, we might consider them as people damaged by their education and upbringing.

Topics: Teacher, Children, Teaching

In life most of us are highly skilled at suppressing action. Bad improvisers block action often with a high degree of skill. Good improvisers develop action.

source: - Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.95, Routledge

Topics: Block, Skills, Degrees

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.

Topics: Games, Laughing, Forgotten

In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.

source: - Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.15, Routledge

Topics: Normal, Spontaneity, Wanted

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

Topics: Ideas, Truth Is, Psychotic

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

Topics: Intelligent, Thinking, Brain

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.

Topics: Children, Eye, Perception

Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems.

Topics: Problem, Solve

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.

Topics: Winning, Laughing, Waiting

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.

source: - Keith Johnstone (2012). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.88, Routledge

Topics: Men, Self, Trying, North Pole

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.

Topics: Apology, Thinking, Stuff, Improvising

There are people who prefer to say ‘Yes’, and there are people who prefer to say ‘No’. Those who say ‘Yes’ are rewarded by the adventures they have, and those who say ‘No’ are rewarded by the safety they attain.

source: - Keith Johnstone (2012). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.92, Routledge

Topics: Adventure, People, Safety

The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination.

source: - Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.93, Routledge

Topics: Lying, Skills, Imagination

Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person would do.

source: - Keith Johnstone (2012). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.99, Routledge

Topics: Looks, Normal, Accepting

Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe.

source: - Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.80, Routledge

Topics: Believe, Thinking, Imagination

If people had no fear, you'd hardly need to have to teach them. It's the fear that screws everything up.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: People, Needs, No Fear

Enjoy things even when you’re screwing up.

Topics: Enjoy

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.

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

Topics: Average, People, Energy, Average Person

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.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Average, People, Trying

An artist who is inspired is being obvious. He’s not making any decisions, he’s not weighing one idea against another. He’s accepting his first thoughts.

source: - Keith Johnstone (1981). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.88, Routledge

Topics: Artist, Ideas, Decision

At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination Wasn’t ‘good’ enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal. The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.

source: - Keith Johnstone (2017). “Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre”, p.82, Bloomsbury Publishing

Topics: School, Ideas, Imagination

Trying to do better is trying to be better than you actually are, and I don't think you can do that.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Thinking, Trying, Can Do, Better Than You

If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing

Topics: Damn, Teach, Damn Things

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.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Thinking, Play, Important

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.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Ideas, Garbage, Accepting

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

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Old Stuff

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.

source: - Source: actorsandperformers.com

Topics: Astounded, Awestruck