“Often the improvisers only know how to accept ideas. That’s not good enough. You have to know what the other person wants. You have to be good at giving them what they want, because if you do it’s the same with the audience.”
“If you do short term improvisation, and if the third or fourth scene isn’t a disaster, you’re in trouble, because the audience starts looking at it like show business and they expect it getting better and better. Biut it’s not like that. You’re performing risky actions in search for a miracle. You don’t get miracles if it’s all safe. (…) Show business covers all the tracks, it hides the faults.”
“In a really good game the best improvisers sometimes lose. And then it’s unpredictable, it’s fun to see it.”
Interview Keith Johnstone