What is Improv - Saying Yes to Life. Talking about improv at Pan Theater in Oakland.

Improvisation is an incredibly important tool. It can help you in your personal life, it can help you in your work life, and it can help you, obviously, as an actor or an improviser, someone who does presentations.

My name is David Aler, and I'm the owner and one of the founders of Pan Theater. I would say that one of the most powerful ideas for me from improv has been the idea of "yes."

So, you have an idea, somebody offers you something, they do something in a scene, and you say "yes," and you see where it goes. Rather than playing it safe, stopping yourself from exploring, you go into the future and you see what happens. You take chances, you take risks, you change, and you transform.

And that idea is also powerful, offstage. I mean, think about how many times someone has asked you if you want to go somewhere, try a new restaurant, go on a vacation, maybe start a new work project, and you think, and the first thing you do is you say "no." No, because you want to think about it. Yet there's no real danger there. The only danger is maybe you'll meet someone new, maybe you'll be a little less experienced at whatever it is, or you'll not quite know it in the beginning. But over time, like anything else, you learn.

And as you do new things, you learn more about yourself, you learn more about other people, and one new thing opens up another new thing.

So, the idea of "yes, and," accepting and adding to, going forward, is an incredibly powerful life tool, an improv tool, a tool for professionals, a tool for performers.

So, if you can take an improv class at Pan Theater, take an improv class at whatever your local improv theater is. And if you learn nothing else through improv but just the idea of saying yes to new things, yes to new opportunities, yes to new possibilities, your life will be forever changed.

So, once again, David from Pan Theater.

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