playful

The concept of yes…and… is often the spring board into improvisation and creating a spontaneous and engaging dialogue for the players as well as the audience. People working in improvisation have confronted yes…and… so many times in their work that it begins to take on the Biblical proportions of all Ten Commandments and the burning bush all rolled into one. For many, it is the first concept encountered as improvisers and one that appeared so simple and easily to do as a direction, but turns out to be wickedly allusive in practice.

The direction IS simple. Here is what is asked in a workshop setting:

Direction Yes…and…:
Two people sit opposite each other. The first person makes an observation statement – real or imagined – about their partner:
Player a) You appear worried.
The other person responds with Yes…and… tells why the observation is true.
Player b) Yes…I just got the bill for my surgery.
Now, what could be simpler than that …you may ask? Well…try it and you will see.

As we look at mastering the yes…and… statement it is a good time to look at why it is so necessary and basic in an improvised scene and why improvised scenes lose there interest and focus unless the dialogue and action of the scene are evolved from a spontaneous or intuitive place. Yes…and… is the perfect place to look to find this transition point between disinterest and spontaneous for it is the fulcrum on which the balance between the two paths rest.

Obviously, in improvisation there is no script, no costumes, or props which is why many actors who will audition for roles for a scripted play would be hard pressed to try improvisation …no way! This reaction is as common as it is understandable. In an improvisation the script, costumes, props are striped away leaving….what?
Leaving …What?

Here is an answer for leaving what? from Sanford Meisner who was a renowned acting teacher at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York. In his book On Acting. Meisner used improvisation in his actor training classes in a form called repetition which is referred to in the quote:

Look, I’ll tell you why the repetition exercise, in essence, is not boring: it plays on the source of all organic creativity, which is the inner impulses. I wish I could make that clear!

Here is an answer form Viola Spolin from her book Improvisation for the Theatre:

The intuitive can only respond in immediacy – right now. It comes bearing gifts in the moment of spontaneity, the moment when we are freed to relate and act, involving ourselves in the moving, changing world around us.

Meisner’s Inner impulse and Spolin’s responding in immediacy defines what is left when script, costumes, props and set are taken away. No great wonder why actors find that scary. When all else is striped away, and you are doing yes…and… what is left but, your inner impulse – your response in immediacy – YOU.