Yes and.. and Fail Lots
By Christian Daly
Where I am now as an emerging artist, and as a person, was fueled by learning two simple theatre concepts. “Yes and…” and “Fail Lots”. Not only have I used these concepts when approaching my artistic work, but they have helped me change my mindset when approaching problems, and even everyday situations in my life. While I learned both of these directly from improvisational theatre, the presence of both of them are common in most theatrical practices, and even other artforms.
“Yes, and…” is about accepting, building, and adding. Really, just the two words sum it up very accurately. In elementary school, I found myself to be the kind of person that would be the one to challenge the ideas put forth by others, and shoot them down if they appeared to be ‘wrong’ from an initial viewing. After learning “Yes, and…”, I realized that this isn’t always efficient, as some solutions might appear wrong because they’re just the initial seed of the larger solution. The way to get the ball rolling and see the merits of an idea is to accept it, and build upon it with your own thoughts. This also leads to greater collective authorship and ownership, where ideas aren’t pitted against each other in a personal manner, because everyone has a stake in all ideas. And in improv, this concept is used for much of the same reasons. Keeping all improvisers active and working towards the same idea, no matter how bizarre things get, actually allows for a more unified scene overall. While I didn’t formally learn this concept until High School Improv, I have realized in hindsight this concept was present earlier in my life, especially as a child. When weaving the complex narrative and lore involved in playing pretend with your brother, saying “yes and…” meant avoiding a conflict so both of us could feel heard.
“Fail Lots” on the other hand was more difficult at first for me, mostly because it doesn’t always feel safe to fail. And I believe creating a space to embrace failure is complicated, yet wholly important in discovering new creative ways of succeeding. By embracing failure, I don’t mean encouraging doing what feels, or is wrong, forever. I simply mean using the freedom to failure as a tool to explore ideas and solutions that wouldn’t have been dreamed of by only trying to do things the correct way. Theatre has offered me a unique perspective in all of this, because when done at its best, theatre is a place where you’re encouraged to fail, fail big, and fail forward. The space where I first learned, in a organized sense, that failure can be used as a tool was once again high school improv. Before this, I was focused on getting things right, and only learning things for the purpose of learning what was correct. In the world of improv however, there was no right answer. To anything. You got up on stage, did whatever, said whatever, and discovered what was working, what was fun, and what made sense in the moment. My mental state, in all aspects of life, started changing from one where I was trying to just find the answer, to one where greater discovery led to answers. While high school improv was a great place to put these ideas into a more formal manner, I realized through my work at Quest Theatre that very young children can have an innate sense of this concept naturally. If you ask a question to a group of children, even if it does have a simple answer, you will be surprised by the range of answers that you do get when there is no pressure to get it right. These kids are not only exercising their creativity, but creating links between possibly dissimilar things that aren’t the ‘correct’ answer, but providing a new perspective on how one could answer. I believe this kind of thinking is important because while some things have definite answers, I find it more common to encounter problems requiring this broader sense of thinking that comes from a freedom of getting it wrong.
All of this is to say that I believe these essential ideas are best introduced through theatre, as the stakes are comparatively low. A performance is a once a done situation in theatre, because even if you repeat it, it has the opportunity to be entirely different. Letting children learn how to fail, and create in a collaborative sense are just some of the ways that theatre teaches more than just learning lines and playing a character.