You’ve probably heard of that rule for improvising “Yes and…”
Basically, it’s a strategy that helps improvisers build scenes together. Someone says or does something and the other actor will ‘yes and’ them.
Actor 1: This trees are massive!
Actor 2: Yes and there’s someone stuck up the top
Actor 1: Oh my god, that’s my aunt!
Actor 2: The one I dated?
Actor 1: You WHAT!?
And so on. By accepting what your scene parter says and adding to it, you can build a scene easily without friction.
There are people in the world who operate from this frame. I love those people. I call them “Yes and people”.
Being a yes and person, I think, is the most generous way to be. It’s seeing people as they are, it’s listening, really listening. It’s building, not destroying.
It doesn’t mean you just agree with what people say or lose your own sense of opinion. But it is honouring difference in people, catching the ball from where they are throwing it and adding to it with where you are coming from.
You can sense a yes and person pretty easily. You feel comfortable, there aren’t awkward pauses, you feel heard and seen, things feel fresh and completely present.
I’m always delighted to meet them out in the wild. Any time I feel self conscious or nervous in a social situation I lean on yes and. Of course its easier to block off in those tricky situations.
After all, tearing something down is easier than building something. It’s easy to gain false status in a situation by blocking someone with various versions of ‘no’. Negativity is easy to bond over with new people we feel self conscious around. But I know how good it feels to be on the receiving end of a yes and person, so when the going gets tough, I’m more than happy to live into yes and.
Anything is possible when yes and is at the beginning.
