Human beings learn by making associations between things (e.g. Pepsi is like Coke, except without all of the good taste*). Improv is analogous to a great many things; herein I consider one specific example – Euchre. I was in Boise, Idaho for a wedding this past weekend, and had the opportunity to play Euchre with some old [&hellip

I came across this article today, and thought it sounded a lot like what I’ve been working on in my improv scenes lately. Sounds like maybe improv can help you be a better lover too! Here’s an excerpt from “The Art of Listening to Your Lover,” published by Psychology Today: In our fast paced society, [&hellip

The following is an except from the book Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind: “When you listen to someone, you should give up all your preconceived ideas and your subjective opinions; you should just listen to him, just observe what his way is. We [practitioners of Zen] put very little emphasis on right and wrong or good [&hellip

  In my previous post, I talked about five reasons why improvisers get stuck in scenes. Ideally, we would stay away from those mistakes and all of our scenes would flow smoothly, but in practice, that’s impossible. Maybe you get thrown off by your partner’s idea, maybe nothing in the scene is affecting you. If you [&hellip

One of the greatest dangers for an improviser is getting stuck in a scene – that sinking feeling when you can tell that a scene is not going well and the audience is not engaged. Your mind freezes, hijacked by the thought of “I don’t know what to do,” and you get stuck in a [&hellip

I wanted to take a few minutes today to reflect on why I like improv so much. I enjoy watching it, learning about it, doing it, discussing it, and obviously writing about it. I proselytize shamelessly. I started a blog just so I could have another opportunity to tell people what I think about improv, [&hellip

When you take improv classes, you learn a lot about yourself. Before I started improv, I used to think I was a great listener. Then one day in class, after doing a scene with my friend Jonathon about the Loch Ness Monster, our teacher Jan pointed out that Jonathon had asked “Do you think she [&hellip

For part one, click here: Yes And, Part I The second part of saying “Yes, and” is the “and.” There is a lot of meaning behind that little conjunction. If someone says, “I made you a sandwich,” it is not enough to respond “Thank you for the sandwich.” You are saying yes to their idea, [&hellip