Very hard to get an audience. So if you're going to fill the theatre, you can't just rely on old stuff. Keith Johnstone More Quotes by Keith Johnstone More Quotes From Keith Johnstone 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. Keith Johnstone importantplaythinking I think my brain is much more intelligent than I am...so I tend to trust it. Keith Johnstone intelligentbrainthinking In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it. Keith Johnstone normalspontaneitywanted 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. Keith Johnstone apologystuffthinking If it weren't for fear, I wouldn't have to teach you a damn thing Keith Johnstone damn-thingsteachdamn 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. Keith Johnstone waitingwinninglaughing The problem's always been to deal with the fear.Cos the fear is pretty . . . it ruins everybody really. Keith Johnstone ruinsdealsproblem 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. Keith Johnstone garbageacceptingideas The improvisation had to be in public, because you only get value playing to strangers. Keith Johnstone improvisationvaluesstranger 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. Keith Johnstone perceptioneyechildren 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 them. They were all about how poetic the feelings of the author were. Keith Johnstone storiesfeelingspeople 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. Keith Johnstone gamesforgottenlaughing Truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal. Keith Johnstone psychotictruth-isideas 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 about [Eugeny] Vakhtangov. I'm a fan of his. When he heard that Vakhtangov had lots of tricks, he thought this was very bad. But when he came to be my student, he realised it was very good to have a lot of tricks. You saw some this morning. Keith Johnstone long-agomorningmean Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it; like Joan Littlewood with her theatre. Keith Johnstone middledrivingtheatre Light entertainment means it mustn't teach you anything. Keith Johnstone entertainmentlightmean 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. Keith Johnstone entertainmentwastewant Trying to do better is trying to be better than you actually are, and I don't think you can do that. Keith Johnstone can-dotryingthinking 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 this than I was doing when I left. Often it's the same improvisers but they're older. And now, they don't care if the theatre's full or not. Keith Johnstone theatreclassyears My feeling is the moment the theatre is not full you have to do something else. But most people somehow think 'If we did it better, they would come'. No. They don't come. Keith Johnstone feelingspeoplethinking
