Let’s imagine that two people - let’s call them Jess and Stef - are having a conversation at the juice bar downtown.
One turns and says to the other, “So what are we doing tonight?”
This story can play out in two ways. Let’s take a look at the first.
“We should go to the movies. No, but I get antsy trying to sit through a full movie. We should go to the mall. No, but I don’t like shopping. We should go mountain biking. No, but I don’t like getting my pants dirty. We should go swimming. No, but I don’t like getting my hair wet. We should go to a concert. No, but I don’t really like big crowds.”
Now, let’s take a look at the second.
“We should go to the movies. Yes, and we should get some popcorn before the movie starts. We should go to Johnny Rockets to get milkshakes after the movies. Yes, and we should paint a giant ketchup face in the middle of the intersection outside of the restaurant. We should probably head to the airport after Johnny Rockets. Yes, and we should buy some plane tickets to Barcelona. We should leave tonight. Yes, and…”
So why did these two conversations, which both started with the idea of going to the movies, end up in such different places? In the first scenario, when Jess presented suggestions to Stef, Stef constantly shut her down. So the conversation essentially went nowhere. A few minutes passed with them going at each other, and they just ended up right back where they started. In the second scenario, when Jess presented suggestions to Stef, Stef couldn’t say no. With the option of shutting Jess down taken off the table, Stef was forced to build on Jess’s suggestions rather than always playing defense and thinking of any possible reason to shut her down.
As we find ourselves in the midst of conversations like these in our everyday lives, we have a tendency to be incredibly closed-minded. When a stranger turns to talk to us on a train platform, or a friend asks us to do something out of our comfort zones, our first instinct is to shut him or her down. Sometimes, we don’t even give ourselves the chance to sufficiently ponder over the option that they’ve presented us with before we spit out a cold, hard, NO. We live on the defense, with our guards up, always willing and ready to shut each other down, instead of building on the people and stories around us.
But what if we didn’t? What if shutting an idea down wasn’t an option, and you had to take what someone said to you and run with it?
As an actor, one of the primary rules in existing in different environments on stage is that we’re not allowed to shut another character down. Particularly when working on improvisation, actors must live and breath the idea of building off our co-actors and moving the scene along with ‘yes, and…’ instead of bringing the scene to a screeching halt by saying ‘no, but…’ In scripted stage productions, while the lines are well-rehearsed and drawn out for us, we still must maintain the same mindset to ensure we are not preempting our lines and are listening to the co-actor who speaks before us. If a co-actor accidentally drops a line or skips over an entire segment of text, we must be listening closely enough that we can deviate from the script and build off of what the character is saying in an imaginative, yet believable manner.
Imagine what would happen if you were sitting in the audience of a show, proceeded to see an actor forget his line, and saw the co-actor on stage with him turn to him and say “dude, that’s not your line…’ Not only would this break the fourth wall and take away some of the magic, but it would also go against everything we know about our role as audience members. When we sit down to watch actors perform for us on stage, we expect to be taken along on a journey, to be brought into a story that may take twists and turns to end up in any which way. We suspend our disbelief, and we expect actors to let the story take them where it must so that we are all jointly brought along for the ride.
If we so readily expect performers to build off of each other and refrain from shutting each other down, how is it that we have become so quick to shut people down in our own lives, rather than digesting their ideas and suggestions and building on them? As an actor, you are repeatedly told that acting is primarily about reacting as opposed to acting. Even if we say a line at the proper time in the show, the magic is lost if we spent the prior moment pondering over our next line in our head, as opposed to appropriately reacting to the actor who has spoken before us. In order to create the magic that comes with watching a play or movie unfold, actors must learn to build off one another, and to embrace the idea of letting go and being open to going anywhere that the story may take us.
Often times, we are so quick to act in our lives and to jump on our premeditated responses, that we don’t give ourselves the time to appropriately digest what other people are saying to us. We don’t react appropriately. Instead of listening to them, we spit out some preformulated reply without giving ourselves sufficient time to even consider their offer. While the conversation presented at the onset of this piece is sufficiently an exaggeration, its intent is twofold: to demonstrate how different conversations and scenarios can be from one another when we are open to listening and building off one another instead of shutting each other down, and to demonstrate how ridiculous our overuse of the word ‘no, but…’ sounds to a third party observer.
By being open to the ideas of those around us and consciously listening to what others have to say, not only are we setting ourselves up for a much more riveting night out, but we are also giving ourselves the chance to think about what we want to do and how to respond, rather than acting based upon how we have been programmed to respond.
So, here’s a little game for you.
As you go through your various conversations today (both as an observer and as a participant), I urge you to think like an actor. For just one day, imagine that you physically don’t have the capability to shut someone down, or to use the word no. When someone talks to you, don’t go on autopilot and blurt out the first thing that comes out of your mouth. Listen to what they have to say, bring the idea into consciousness, and formulate a reply in the affirmative. You can pivot the conversation, but every time you reply to someone, it needs to start with some iteration of ‘yes, and…’ instead of ‘no, but…’ It may feel a bit ridiculous at first, but I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised where the elimination of this one small word from your vocabulary may take you.
Besides, would it really be so bad if you spent your Monday night en route to Barcelona?