John Cleese on Writing and Performing as Science

DAVIES: You know, and you say many times in the book that you're more a writer than a performer. CLEESE: It's always hard for people to believe that because of course, anytime they've seen me it's because I've been performing. You know, they don't go to their televisions and switch them on and see me sitting at home writing, you know? So naturally, people's image is of a performer, but the reality is the writing for me has always been the most important thing and the most rewarding thing. And I've always called myself a writer/performer, not an actor because I basically write what I perform. And I kind of - the writing is the most important bit, and performing it is just - close the circle because I'm less likely to screw it up than anyone else. But there's another reason. When you do comedy in front of an audience, they are the ones who tell you whether it's funny or not and which bits are funny and which bits need to be fixed. So that when you start performing it in front of an audience on stage, when you start in a show, it's a very interesting process to perform it because it's like a series of little scientific experiments each night to try and make things work that didn't work the night before. And as you've got it to the point where you think, now I know how this needs to be played. We've made some cuts, things that didn't work, we've rephrased it in things we found that - to play these lines with some anger, but these lines with no anger at all. This now makes it funny. And that's the point where I wanted to say, well, that's the end of the experiment as far as I'm concerned. I want to move on to something new now. But of course, a proper actor will be happy to do that on stage for several months. And I don't have that temperament.