When teaching Yes And in Improv 101, I use a fairly technical model, showing the how-to steps of Yes And:
Step 1: Awareness. You must be present and open to be able to perceive the offers that are made. If you are in your head, in the future or the past, you might miss the most important thing: what’s right in front of you.
Step 2: Offer. Someone (and that might be you) does something or says something. Anything and everything can be an offer. Try to percieve the offers without judgement (good/bad) or categorization (intentional/mistake.)
Step 3: Acceptance. For beginner improv, we are looking for Instant Enthusiastic Agreement. Saying YES fully and quickly. For real world purposes, this might be more accepting what is (This isn’t what you expected, but it’s happening.) and building from there.
Step 4: Addition. Build on to the offer with something connected to it. Get some skin in the game and make your own offer, making sure it’s a response to the previous offer.
Tag: offers
Lessons from Ben Rodgers→
“Being specific doesn’t mean just saying your burger’s from Carl’s Jr. Try to give your character a philosophy and fill out the universe they live in.”
The sooner you know how to play your game, the sooner you can start tagging.
The frisbee zone→
When you’re playing frisbee, the exciting parts aren’t when someone throws you a nice easy catch right at chest height. That’s no fun. When it gets exciting is when it’s just out of reach and you have to jump or dive to get to it. Then it’s like, wow, what a catch! Maybe sometimes you dive and you don’t quite catch the frisbee. But it’s still more fun than an easy lob.