Improv Comedy Techniques: Listening

Video Transcript

"LES MCGEHEE: Hi, it's Les McGehee from "Plays Well With Others." I'm your improv friend here on Expert Village with my pal, Joe Parsons. We have another improv lesson for you. Perhaps the other most important thing, in addition to "yes and" that you'll learn about simple improvisation work is listening. If you listen really carefully like Joe is telling me great many things right now, I'm not interested in very many of them 'cause I'm talking to you, but if I were trying to work off of Joe right now, by listening including visual cues and everything, I get all the information I need from Joe. I don't need anything else if I listen carefully. We're going to teach an exercise right now that's good for practicing your listening, called "First Letter, Last Letter." And the way that's going to work is I'm going to start a conversation about anything I want. Joe has to answer his first word of his response, needs to start with the last letter that I used. This way, he's defeating a thing psychologist called rehearsal dropout. That's that thing where you're listening to somebody talk like, maybe me right now, and about halfway through what I'm saying, you think, oh, I've got the idea of what he's saying. I need to be thinking about what I'm going to do when this is over or when I go to the store later, what I remember to buy or something. That's called rehearsal dropout, we start working on your response instead of listening. This defeats that, you have to listen all the way to the end 'cause you don't know what you're going to start with 'till then. So, some people think it's uncomfortable, most people think it's fun, and everybody needs to practice listening, so it's an exercise. It's not for entertainment, but if it's funny for you it's okay."