How improvised comedy can help resolve conflict

I live in rural Maine, where I co-founded an organization that works with teachers around the world to advance humanities education, a field that prepares people to create a more just and peaceful future. Transforming schools, curricula and strategies for positive change is no easy task these days. But I discovered a powerful new approach: improvised comedy.

I’m far from the comedy hubs of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, but we have an incredibly talented Second City-trained couple who have brought improv to our community, both as performers and teachers. I started taking classes with them years ago and realized that the lessons I learned could do more than just make people laugh; they could help build a better world.

The more I practiced, the more I witnessed the power of improvisation to cultivate a solution-focused mindset and lessen the polarization that prevents positive change. The key was four basic rules: build relationships, embrace the “yes and,” bring love, and help others shine.

Building relationships

The reason “building relationships” is the first rule of improv comedy is because without establishing a relationship, actors struggle to care about each other, express relatable emotions, and move the scene forward. If the actors don’t care, neither will the audience. Improvisers must establish rapport even when they don’t naturally identify with or like what their scene partner is doing or saying. To effectively solve real-life problems, we also need to build relationships with those we don’t connect with or who do and say things we don’t like.

Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, I was speaking at a conference and one of the other speakers, a well-known Harvard professor, said he didn’t know anyone who voted for Trump. Was he subtly suggesting that Trump supporters weren’t worth getting to know? Unlike him, I knew a lot of people who voted for Trump and I appreciated the opportunity to understand their perspectives, which were different from mine. Our conversations helped us expand our perspectives, think in more nuanced ways, and identify solutions to problems we both agreed on.

It’s understandable that we often choose to avoid “them” – whoever we define as “them”. Having dedicated my life to promoting women’s rights, animal protection, environmental sustainability, and social justice, an ongoing commitment to the value of building relationships across divides is necessary so that I can seek friendships with people who struggle. against a woman’s right to abortion, killing animals for recreational purposes, opposing sensible environmental regulations, or saying things I consider bigoted. But I know that unless I build such relationships, I am more likely to stereotype and possibly even vilify others who have different beliefs, as well as miss opportunities to cooperatively develop solutions to problems. The more I build these relationships, the more successful I am in understanding divergent perspectives and even changing the thinking of others.

Embracing “yes and”

The second rule of improv is “yes, and,” which refers to the practice of embracing any premise suggested by a scene partner (“yes”) and adding to the suggestions they offer (“and”). Imagine an improv actor opening a scene with “Mom, I signed us up for the parent-child acrobatic competition at school” and “Mom” responding, “Great Brian! We can use the pink polka dot tights I bought on eBay!” The scene is moving forward not only because a relationship has been established, but also because of the “yes and”.

In improv comedy, “yes and” prepares us to listen carefully and embrace the suggestions of others so that we can collaborate in creating a great scene. Imagine what would have happened in the scene above if the actor identified as “Mom” had responded, “I’m not your mom and I don’t do stunts.” The scene would have fallen apart and the first actor would have had nowhere to go from there.

See more information: You must say ‘yes’ to every new opportunity

In our everyday lives, “yes, and” is a mindset that asks us to look for points of agreement and then add our own ideas. Accepting the “yes and” can be quite challenging, especially around highly charged issues. However, we can usually find some area accordingly. For example, both pro-choice and pro-life advocates generally want as few girls and women as possible to face unwanted pregnancy. And no one wants mass shootings to persist. If we can start with at least agreement on an issue, that common ground opens the possibility for respectful sharing of ideas and paves the way for potential collaboration.

Bringing the love

Rule three, “bring the love,” is fundamental to improv comedy because conflicts on stage are generally not funny (unless you’re Larry David). In real life, bringing about love often requires significant effort. It is often much easier to focus on the negative aspects. Who expresses love for the people who respectfully drive alongside us on the highway? However, as soon as we get stuck in traffic, we can hit the horn and practically lose our minds in rage. Extend this tendency to society at large, and a cesspool of vitriol will often be expelled from our psychic underworld through the comfort of our keyboards or the power of a crowd. Meanwhile, solutions to problems become increasingly elusive as we burn potential bridges and fuel our outrage.

In improv comedy, actors have an advantage: they are actively trying to bring love. In real life, we often come across other people doing anything but that, which makes it much harder to bring love. However, when we can meet hostility with love – to the extent that this is possible and makes sense – it is not uncommon to observe that love melts another person’s anger. When this happens, even solving our most intractable problems seems possible.

Help others shine

Finally, improvisers strive to “help others shine.” They know that just as their fellow actors shine, so does the scene. As in improvised comedy, so in life. Adopting this rule offers us a way to lessen our desire to be the center of attention in favor of a greater goal. As more of us seek, learn, and share all that is worthy of light—and amplify the voices of those doing good work that goes unnoticed—building humane, sustainable societies may even become likely.

I didn’t expect that improvisation would be fundamental to effectively solving the real-world problems that mattered to me—or that its four basic rules would guide so much of my life’s work. Just as developing good improvisation skills takes practice, it takes practice to apply these rules in real life.

Establishing such a practice is not easy. It requires a commitment to listen, remain present and open. But the more we practice, the greater the rewards: more meaningful relationships, greater curiosity and creativity, and successful collaboration to discover and implement solutions to the thorny problems we face.

Adapted from The solutionary way: transform your life, live your truth, make a difference by Zoe Weil, published by New Society Publishers. Copyright © 2024 by Zoe Weil. Reprinted courtesy of New Society Publishers.