Accepting and building

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Also called "Yes, And". This is one of the primary Improv skills and is often taught first to new improvisors. In a scene, accepting and building is when a person says something ("There is a shark!") and the other person accepts it immediately as the reality of the scene. A scene without either of these things would probably go like this:


P1: "There is a shark!"

P2: "Nope. Sharks don't live in these waters."

P1: "Oh. Well, maybe it was just the shadow of a passing cloud..."

P2: "Nope. Looks like a sunny day to me."

P1: "Okay, well... Do you want to build a sand castle?"

P2: "Nope."


This is called negating. Not only does this make the scene drag on but it makes your partner look bad, and one of the most important parts of Improv is making your partner look good on stage.

It might seem obvious that you should not negate like this in a scene, but sometimes it's easy to forget. Sometimes you might feel like you have a really good idea and that everything your scene partner is saying is going to prevent your idea from working well. That's improv, though; as soon as something happens that was not part of your idea, you throw your idea out. You're quick enough to come up with another one on the spot, though, I promise. That's what improv is all about. The second part of this is to go one step further than just accepting the ideas of your partner by building upon them. A scene like this...


P1: "There is a shark!"

P2: "Yes, there is!"

P1: "Yeah! We should get out of the water!"

P2: "Yeah! We should!"


... Better than the first scene, but still puts all of the pressure to come up with ideas on Person 1. If Person 2 were accepting and building, the scene might have been something like this:


P1: "There is a shark!"

P2: "Oh my gosh, I see it! If we keep really still maybe it won't see us."

P1: "You're right, I think I heard that on the Discovery channel one time. Hey, look! It's swimming away!"

P2: "Perfect, let's swim to shore and build a sand fortress so that no dangers will ever threaten us again."


This scene moves along much more quickly than the previous scene because both people are accepting and building.