The basic building block of improvisation is ‘Yes and.’ The premise of every statement improvisers make is one of agreement and addition. Scenes move forward by ratcheting along with the ‘tool’ of yes-and like a climber finding holds on the side of a mountain…
Yes, we are here, and I see a place we can grab over there. Yes! A new crack reveals itself, and we grab it. We see another hold and we make the move. Yes, and now we’re experiencing the mountain from a new perspective. Multiple new holds appear, and one hold at a time, with each move accompanied by a thousand little calculations that are faster than conscious thought, we move up the face of the mountain.
Beginning improvisation students tend to use the phrase ‘Yes and’ literally. Skilled players discover infinite ways to ‘Yes and’ without necessarily using the words themselves. This keeps technique in the background where it belongs. A scene in which every player begins every contribution with the words ‘Yes and’ will get sing-songy in a hurry, and that’s not what we want. We want nuance. Refinement. We want technique to be second nature so that it becomes invisible to our audience, and we can pay attention fully to the realities of the environment and our fellow players. That’s gamechanging leadership.
Gamechanging is the art of doing what’s best for the scene. That means knowing a lot of different ways to yes-and. GameChangers yes-and artfully, with technique taking a backseat to the scene’s objective.
They can do it with a smile and a supporting comment. Or
A reaction and a correction. Or
With constructive criticism. Or
By giving gifts to their scene partners and making them look good. Or
By seeing and adding to the environment. Or
By joining in the shop talk of the scene. Or
By keeping the scene focused on its objective. Or
By supporting the scene from offstage. Or
By making declarative statements instead of interrogating scene partners. Or
By energizing and heightening the emotional level of the scene. Or
By emphasizing convergence on a solution when a divergence of ideas gets unwieldy. Or
By doing what our friend Kristen Parrinello calls ‘invisible work’ (@invisiblework is her Twitter handle), the little moves that are so subtle as to be invisible to the audience.
Walt Disney used to call yes-anding (and Pixar Animation has taken to calling it) ‘plussing.’ Add something to the scene, and if you don’t have anything to add, get off the stage.
Not that you shouldn’t practice yes-anding by literally using those two words. You should. Use them as a kind of warm-up or rehearsal, like you’d practice the basic forms in ballet or the scales in music. When the game is on, and you’re in the heat of a big scene, ‘Yes and’ may not literally pop up in your dialogue, but the technique will be there, invisible and inaudible, doing its work, ratcheting you and your team to the summit of whatever mountain you choose to climb.
Over the holidays, our friend Dean Read, the national sales director for 
