and’. Is it about improv, Second
City, or a little of both? It’s a little
of both. It’s a book I co-wrote
with Tom Yorton that is coming
out in February with Harper Collins. It’s basically the 7 principals
of improvisation and talks about
how they play out at Second City
and have they’ve played out when
we’ve worked with other businesses and how they can play out
in your own life.
‘Yes, and’ is the sticky center of
improvisation. The idea is that
if you say ‘no’ at the start of any
brainstorming session, it’ll go nowhere. You can’t build anything
original or new if you say no. You
have to start with ‘yes, and’ and
not just affirm but contribute.
One of the things we do often
when we go into businesses is
task people with going one day
where you can’t say no. It’s really,
really hard. But what you recognize when you eliminate that from
your vocabulary is that you just
might allow one of those crazy
ideas that could be a gem to find
its way through where before it
never would have gotten there.
It’s the heart and soul of improvisation and I think it’s key to what’s
made us successful.
The book also has backstage stories on a lot of the famous alumni
and some of the work we’ve done
with groups like Major League
Baseball. Hopefully, it’s going to
be interesting to people who want
to get an idea into what we do
here, but also we feel improvisation is a cutting-edge methodology that — if you look around the
world today — more people are
recognizing is important.
November 7-8
Second City Does New Jersey:
Paved and Confused
NJPAC, 1 Center Street, Newark NJ
New Jersey Stage
October 2014
pg 30