We were filling in a form, and little did we know that, one day, what we put we’d find we’d kept.

We acknowledge The Bricoleurs for asking the questions and hope they don’t mind us including them here to give context to our answers.

How and why is improvisation important in your artistic practice?

It’s like the voice to a musician. You always have it with you but you never have to book an extra seat for it on the plane.

What makes good improvisation in performance? Or, to put it another way, what do you enjoy or look for in improvised performances, and is that different for non-improvised performances?

The difference between that which makes for so-so improvisation and that which makes for good improvisation is like the difference between finding a £50 note on the floor after looking for it for a day, and after having looked for it for a week and given up and then finding it by accident.

Or to put it another way it’s like the difference between saying goodbye to someone you love and saying goodbye to someone you’ve never even met and wondering whether it was really goodbye.

What do you expect or want from audiences of improvised performances, and is this different for non-improvised performances?

In both cases I expect them to look at the knife and the lemon they find on their seats and to take precautions not to sit on them.

But I want them to take the knife and having taken the knife to cut up the lemon into cut-up halves.

What do you see as the place of improvised performance in the context of the art form(s) you practise? (This deliberately vague question is really an invitation to reflect on improvisation in whatever way interests you - happy pseuding! […]

A manifesto which places special value on this form or that technique is like a precious recipe book you can’t live without that grows on a special tree in a special forest at the farthest most end of the Northern line but which turns to dust as soon as it is plucked from the branch.