Accept Offers: Speak To The Topic Offered
Full disclosure: when you teach or coach, you go through phases in which you fall in love with certain mantras, or certain priorities. I’ve obsessed about justification, about reacting, about reality, about game. I’m in one again, and this time it’s all about “making and accepting offers.” And as suspicious as I try to be about how I have in the past over-reacted and overly-relied on a particular strategy — I cannot escape from the belief that this phrase may indeed hit on the very central tenant of what is missing from teams that are not working. They do not, by default, look to accept each other’s offers.
They will not, comedically and theatrically speaking, dance with each other.
I wrote something about accepting offers before — but before I meant specifically to accept any suggestion or question half-heartedly stated by your scene partner. I stand by that as a fun thing to do which almost always helps your scene.
But now I think even more fundamentally that telling teams to accept each others offers —- and to look at every line as an offer, to hear every line you make as an offer — solves a great deal of agreement and teamwork problems.
I think Delaney was the first guy I heard use the phrase “make and accept offers” — he says it’s a Del thing. I don’t know.
What I do know is when I watch a team and I choose to observe the scenes with the mindset “how well are they accepting each other’s offers” that I can see many many moments of dismissal, of ignoring, of misunderstanding that would likely not happen if these people kept as a point of pride to recognize and accept the offers being presented to them.
Really, it’s just a re-stating of “yes, and” (like so many improv mantras are) but I like it because a) it’s new to me and b) it’s more active.
SPEAK TO THE TOPIC OFFERED
- Initiation: “Honey, come on, the car’s running, we gotta go.”
What should the response be? This is pretty wide-open initiation. There’s no game or unusual thing in it (unless it was some comment on the suggestion). Speaking conservatively, all you really “have” to do is accept that you are in a couple with the initiator, and that you guys had plans to go somewhere, or at least your partner thought so.
A possible response which seems fine but I will argue is not good:
- Response: “Hey, I can’t go! I’m still making all the salads!”
That initiation agrees that there is urgency, and it adds a specific activity and agenda for the responder. It “yes, ands” — at least enough that we can get going.
However, if I think of the response as an “offer” — I suddenly see it as an offer that let’s talk about this thing we’re going to. Suddenly, anything that refuses to address this thing that we’re going to feels like a denial, a distraction, a refusal.
To accept the offer fully and simply, the responder should speak to what the initiator is speaking about. I would accept either of these responses:
- “Just had to get my coat. Oh I hope your Dad isn’t upset that we’re late for his party,” or
- “You know what, sweetheart? I think I don’t want to go. I think I’m just not the church-going type.”
Meaning, I don’t care if the character accepts the offer of wanting to go — but the actor should accept the offer that “where we are going is the focus right now.” Don’t bring up salads, or something else in your life. Your partner has offered a topic, you should speak to it. To do otherwise is to dismiss your partner and focus instead on carving out your own separate piece of land to live on.
I see lots of people in the first 3 lines worry exclusively about giving themselves something to do, preferably something funny and wacky — and what their partner is talking about becomes second priority.
I have SEVEN OTHER PARTS TO THIS. Dear lord. I’ve tried to set up Tumblr to publish one a day, so we’ll see. Some of these are really good.
