MetaJess

‘When I explain that sanity is a matter of interaction, rather than one’s mental processes… the students agree that for years they have been suppressing all sorts of thinking because they classified it as insane.’

‘The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene and unoriginal.’

'When you act or speak spontaneously, you reveal your real self, as opposed to the self you’ve been trained to present.'

'The brain constructs the universe for us, so how is it possible to be ‘stuck’ for an idea? The student hesitates not because he doesn’t have an idea, but to conceal the inappropriate ones that arrive uninvited.'

‘Reading about spontaneity won’t make you more spontaneous, but it may at least stop you heading off in the wrong direction; and if you play the exercises with your friends in a good spirit, then soon all your thinking will be transformed.’

1/2: ‘The improviser has to understand that his first skill lies in releasing his partner’s imagination. What happens in my classes, if the actors stay with me long enough, is that they learn how their ‘normal’ procedures destroy other people’s talent.

2/2: Then one day they have a flash of satori – they suddenly understand that all the weapons they were using against other people they also use inwardly, against themselves.’

“We don’t know much about Masks in our culture ... because [it] is usually hostile to trance states. We distrust spontaneity and try to replace it by reason.”