Everyone is an Old Friend

In improv, you can wreck a scene by asking a question. The point is that you take what someone else is doing and add to it. In our first class, they said improv is like having a conversation. What they left out is that you're talking to an old friend, not someone new. When you meet someone new, you ask a lot of questions, you have little to make assumptions off of at the risk of seeming like an ass hole. The trick is to treat this new person on the stage with you as if you've know him since high school, and you know he likes banjos and hates blue particles.

Taking it outside of class, some of the better first dates or friend introductions have been when people build the conversation making statements, instead of the usual question answer game of catch. The only difference is that in improv you are expected to be someone else, some other character that you can displace some of the ass holiness on to. In real life, you run that risk, but when it pays off, it pays off big I think. This next week I'm going to make it a point when I meet new people to change the conversation from a Q & A session to a series of statements, and see how it pans out.