October 28, 2013

Making It Up As We Go Along

I'm three weeks into a four week long improv class and I am loving it. This sounds hokey but I really think it's helping me in my every day life. The most important principle in improvisation is the concept of "yes, and?" It means you acknowledge what your partner is setting up, accepting it and going along for the ride. There's a lot of power in saying yes. In saying yes in scene work and other improv exercises I've starting doing it in my day to day life. Simple things like saying yes to blind dates or yes to bacon on my sandwich! It's pretty awesome.

I'm not going to get too philosophical here. But yeah, man. YES TO LIFE!!!

The first class had about fourteen of us but the numbers have dwindled down to half of that. I'm okay with the shrinking class as long as my favorite classmate Susan is there. I realized I fell in love with this woman when we were trying to figure out who hadn't arrived to class yet last week and I kept saying "Sue, Susan. Susan isn't here. Susan" This woman makes me lol like very few people can. She thinks she doesn't understand the concept of our exercises and then she makes the funniest skits. And she doesn't even mean to!! Her honesty is what makes her funny. I can't do her justice in writing this. All I know is I got to do scene work with her three times tonight and it was awesome!!

This class is a real treat. I didn't realize how much I missed improv. I didn't do it much in college and very little of it in high school. Maybe because I'm more confident and comfortable in myself (and have more theatre training under my belt) I can approach improv in a totally different and whole way. If that makes sense. Whatever, man. I'm saying yes. YES I SAY!!! And if Susan wants to be my friend, I say hell yes.

No comments: