Occupation: Playwright Birth: 1933
None of us really grow up. All we ever do is learn how to behave in public..
Good improvisers seem telepathic; everything looks pre-arranged, This is because they accept all offers made—which is something no ‘normal’ person wo….
Many teachers think of children as immature adults. It might lead to better and more 'respectful' teaching, if we thought of adults as atrophied chil….
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 ….
Don't come on to be funny - come on to solve problems..
The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers..
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 ….
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 ab….
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….
The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination..
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..
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..
Imagination is as effortless as perception, unless we think it might be ‘wrong’, which is what our education encourages us to believe..
The best laughs are on the recognition of truth..
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….
Enjoy things even when you’re screwing up..
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 t….
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 thei….
You can sort of trick people into being really good. Even if they didn't know anything..
If you have a good idea, open your mouth and say something else..
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 thou….