Improvisors use the phrase, “Yes, and…” to answer and begin a scene. But really, everything can be about “Yes, anding” if we allow that. Doesn’t life get interesting when we answer whatever may come with a “Yes, and…”? This simple phrase is actually quite familiar through other words. Lots of phrase contain the idea of saying “Yes” to life: “Go with the flow”, “Effortless action,” “I don’t mind,” “Show up, and see what happens…”
Saying YES to life, without resistance, no matter how messy, no matter how seemingly painful or humiliating, seems the only choice to me, anymore!
I am 46. I took my first “Improv” class almost two years ago, and soon after, I found myself stripped and naked of all I had known for a long while. Soon after that first class finished, I left my marriage of 19 years. I gathered my teenage girls, my possessions, and started out on a new life – a venture into the unknown. Improv didn’t make me change me life directly, but it sure as hell helped me get the confidence to sit still, to listen, to see, to shake off the sleepy dust of roles and expectations. When I was present enough to show up, I realized my husband had already left, though he was not able to convey this except by not showing up, literally. Waking up and seeing takes courage sometimes, but now I know that showing up is the only option for me.
But this is just a story, any story really. Anyone in a body has one. And the same way improv, on a stage as a form of comedy or acting, lets us tell stories, experience identities, act out utter insanity; being in a body does all this as well. Life is one constant scene. We may forget this, attaching to the bodies we have, to the stories we think we are. When we plug into believing we are our roles, life has very high stakes for these “PERSONS.” Just as easily, I can shift my life, as the improvisor does from scene to scene, with a “yes, and…” and a listening ear – making life become play…life as improv!
There are so many avenues to explore; this is just one…I’m going to show up here and see what happens.
Life as Improv 