Improv Quotes

“Improvisers are unaware of what is about to happen until it occurs, spontaneously creating as they go along.”
― Roger Spitz, Disrupt With Impact: Achieve Business Success in an Unpredictable World

“Everyone can act. Everyone can improvise. Anyone who wishes to can play in the theater and learn to become stageworthy.”
― Viola Spolin, Improvisation for the Theater

“The greatest thing I learned while taking classes at Second City was the very first thing they taught: 'Yes, and...'. In improv, you keep scenes alive but accepting whatever you are given and then adding to it or amplifying it. There is no space on stage for 'No,' 'I'm sorry, you're mistaken,' or 'Yes, but...'. Those transitions kill energy, set up interpersonal conflict, engage the ego in a defensive posture, and stymie the flow of conversation onstage.”
― Jason Seiden, How to Self-Destruct: Making the Least of What's Left of Your Career

“It’s only fabric! Freestyle fabric cutting and sewing is a low-risk endeavor with a strong payoff of personal growth and empower- ment.”
― Patricia Belyea, East-Meets-West Quilts: Explore Improv with Japanese-Inspired Designs

“Somewhere in the back of my head must have been the thought that No leads to dead ends, and Yes leads to possibilities. Again, hearkening back to my improv days, this was the ultimate "Yes And.”
― Rachel Dratch, Girl Walks into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle

“These games create a space for us to play together and connect with our joy; they also develop imagination, confidence, critical thinking, trust, connection and understanding within groups”
― Hannah Fox, Zoomy Zoomy: Improv Games and Exercises for Groups

“I’ve embarked on personal adventures with each of these quilts. I want to teach you how to do the same.”
― Patricia Belyea, East-Meets-West Quilts: Explore Improv with Japanese-Inspired Designs

“Take a good look at your fabric and intuit what it is saying to you.”
― Patricia Belyea, East-Meets-West Quilts: Explore Improv with Japanese-Inspired Designs

“The world of improv is a portal into mindfulness and magic.”
― Patricia Ryan Madson, Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up

“Improvisors connect for the same basic reason you and your friends connect. Say you meet someone. You like something about them and they like something about you. Your mutual interest begets mutual play. Play begets cooperation and mutual understanding, which, trampolined by fun, becomes love. Love is the highest form of play.”
― Sam Wasson, Improv Nation: How We Made a Great American Art

“The problem with being an adult most of your life is not having been a child long enough.

(08/26/2019)”
― Wyatt Pringle

“The practice of improvisation (in contrast, say, to that of writing or painting) teaches something that we are hungry to understand: how to be in harmony with one another and how to have fun. We practice improvisation not only to “express ourselves” but to connect with others in a more immediate way.”
― Patricia Ryan Madson

“The practice of improvisation (in contrast, say, to that of writing or painting) teaches something that we are hungry to understand: how to be in harmony with one another and how to have fun. We practice improvisation not only to “express ourselves” but to connect with others in a more immediate way.”
― Patricia Ryan Madso

“...playing these physical and imaginative group games instantly creates community connection.”
― Hannah Fox, Zoomy Zoomy: Improv Games and Exercises for Groups

“These games inspire laughter, spontaneity, ensemble building, physical and vocal expression, concentration, self-discovery/reflection, self-esteem, and, ultimately, I believe, good health. They get adults, and teenagers too, playing again, which is no small feat.”
― Hannah Fox, Zoomy Zoomy: Improv Games and Exercises for Groups

“Improvising is playing a game with no plot rules which middles you as fuck.”
― Deyth Banger

“I can barely forgive myself for the time when I negged Billy from my improv troupe onstage. He said, “I have a gift for you,” and my first instinct was to say, “No you don’t.” The scene died right then and there. See what happens when I try to nurture something? I know it seems dramatic to relate destroying an improv scene to possibly destroying a child’s life, but improv and child rearing are not so different. Both are jobs that people volunteer for and complain about endlessly, and they bore everyone around them as they talk about the process.”
― Jen Kirkman, I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids

“Physis (Emerging-Abiding Sway), yes that’s the oink thing’s
christian name, the café’s semi-official mascot, philosophical provocateur, and occasionally extradimensional notary, chose this
exact moment to poke his head, feathered, contemplative, and
faintly iridescent, through the bead curtain that separated the main
patio from what the proprietor called the “Reflexology Lounge,”
but which was, in truth, just where they stored the broken espresso
machine and three cursed stools. Physis tilted his head, blinked
once, slowly, as if absorbing not light but context, and let out a
warbling honk that echoed like a misremembered thesis defense.
He was, as ever, the embodiment of that which emerges and then
stubbornly, inexplicably abides.
And then, as mysteriously as he had arrived, he withdrew.”
― Chase Griffin, Schlemiel Gaucho: An Improv Comedy Magick Grimoire

“The outpost is called Iggnïs. The monks, just like the rest of Sacrum Regnum Ex Tempore, are not Christian like the rest of the
kingdoms of Europe. We practice a religion known as Ecclesia
Improvisa or The Unforeseen Church, a religion from what Dr. Z
gathered in his travels invoked an entity known as Par’hypono’ian
through a method Z said looked exactly like the modern improv
comedy theatre technique of Yes-And-If-Then.”
― Chase Griffin, Schlemiel Gaucho: An Improv Comedy Magick Grimoire