You can sort of trick people into being really good. Even if they didn't know anything.

Trying to do better is trying to be better than you actually are, and I don't think you can do that.

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 their best. So I try to persuade them to be average. Because if you're wonderful and you're average, you're still wonderful. If you're a bad improviser and you're average, you're what you are.

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.

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.

Very hard to get an audience. So if you're going to fill the theatre, you can't just rely on old stuff.

Every theatre worth anything has somebody in the middle of it who is driving it; like Joan Littlewood with her theatre.