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219 Forum Theatre and the Power of “Yes, and . . .” Jessy Ardern Just about every improv class ever taught has started with a game called “Yes, and . . .” (Seham xxiv). It’s an extremely simple game. Character #1 makes a statement; Character #2 accepts the premise and builds on it. The cat ran away. Yes, and I’m afraid it will get lost. I need to find a job. Yes, and you need to do so before we are evicted. When I first began to learn improv, this game made me want to chew my own face off, and I was as vocal as anyone else with my complaints: Do we have to play this? We get it. It’s boring. Can we do something else? Can we do something REAL? The answer was always, Later. After we’ve learned this. After you know how to say “yes.” The fact is that as an actor, as an improviser, and as a human being, learning to say “yes” can sometimes be very difficult. When I was approached about working on a Forum Theatre play about racism in my hometown of Winnipeg, my kneejerk reaction was not “yes.” It was something more akin to “Thanks, but I think I’d rather drink Drano.” I had done message-driven theatre before, with unhappy results. No one likes to be preached to. Especially teenagers. (Especially teenagers bearing fruit, I once had the misfortune to learn.) No, I thought. No, no, no. And then, somehow, the voice of my high school improv coach came floating up through the recesses of my brain. Nothing interesting ever happens with “no.” Nothing is ever created with “no.” And so I signed on. And I stayed on, from the first day of workshops through the last day of performance. I came, I sat, I did my best to shut up and listen. I heard, I was touched, I was humbled. And in spite of my still-rampant pessimism, when asked to act in the show’s workshop production, I said “yes.” When asked to play Crystal, the show’s thoroughly hateful oppressor, I said “yes.” Jessy Ardern 220 At that point, you see, I had learned my lesson. Saying “yes” is not only an essential tool in performance; it is a catalyst for personal growth in real life. When we began rehearsing the collaboratively created Forum Theatre play No Offense . . . , it provided a tool that I could never have lived without. In a situation wherein every audience intervention is different, the worst thing that you can possibly do is shut yourself off. “Yes” is always the answer. “Yes, and . . .” In an improv, everything that your scene partner says or does is an “offer” (Seham xxiv). To get anywhere, you must say “yes” to every offer that comes your way, no matter how different it is from where you think the scene should go. Blocking someone else’s ideas may get a laugh, but it also usually stops the scene cold, as in the following scenario: Bill: I’ve brought you to the museum, the site of our first date, to ask . . . (kneeling down) Will you marry me? Kate: What? We’ve never been on a date. I don’t know you. And we’re not in a museum, we’re in a rocket ship. Not only is the scene over before even getting started, but the trust of the actor playing Bill is shot to hell. Why should he offer anything new when his partner is just going to reject all of his ideas and build her own scene? In our Forum Theatre performances, if an audience member was going to be bold enough to come up onstage and try something out, then we had a duty not to betray that trust and run roughshod over him or her. Otherwise, new volunteers would be low in supply. I tried to take this idea to heart as much as possible while preparing to work with audience members. As we drilled interventions over and over in rehearsal, with cast members filling in as our rehearsal audience, I kept a constant refrain in my head: “What are they offering me? What are they telling me? How can I accept that information and allow it to change the scene?” These questions were sometimes tough to answer, but eventually the practice of analysis and response became easier, almost automatic, and I made increasingly stronger, character-driven choices in our improvised dialogue: Crystal: Guess who’s back...

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