Our second class started with more relaxed energy than the first. Classmates were actually talking to each other, rather than sitting in awkward silence! We began this class by again sitting in a circle, and introduced ourselves to one student who had missed our class last week. This was a relief to everyone, since it’s amazing how many people you remember by face but not by name after a week, even though we spent so much time repeating those names to each other last week.
Then Corey explained the theme of this week’s class. The exercises we were about to do were all based around the idea of working together and supporting one another within a scene or activity. As with all things improv, this was again based on the principle of “Yes, and” but in this case it was about saying “yes” to each other’s ideas in order to keep the group moving forward, not just to make yourself look good.
But more on that later. To kick things off, we got our voices and bodies warmed up by shaking our arms and legs and a couple of other warmup games we did last week.
After that, we started with the new exercises and games. First was where we had to pass an imaginary ball from person to person and do random word association every time we “caught” the “ball.”* It was basically part improv, part psychological exam. Our answers ended up being largely sensical and mundane, so no troubled cases in the class as far as I can see. 
My favorite games from this class were the storytelling ones:
The first one was where half the class stood up in a line in front of the other half of the class, and had to tell a story about a particular object with each person only saying one word at a time. It was pretty tricky to tell a story when you can’t control the words that comes before or after your word! Everyone ends up saying a lot of “and” and “the,” since grammar obviously still plays a part. The stories still took a turn for the bizarre and vaguely raunchy, so a good time was had by all.
Then Corey took the group storytelling concept to the next level. This time, we stood up in groups of five people, and the first person in the line began a story using another suggestion from the rest of the class. But this time, that first person had to keep talking as long as Corey was pointing to them, and couldn’t stop until he pointed at someone else in the line! So even if you felt like you had made your point and had given everyone a complete thought pertaining to the story, you just had to KEEP TALKING until you were off the hook. Pretty nerve-wracking! But it’s amazing how your brain can step up and give you the material you need to keep talking as long as you have to. So many people in the class did such a great job with this, and by the end we were all laughing and congratulating each other on a job well done.
Overall, this class really felt like the start of us learning, as opposed to last week when it was just getting to know each other. Each of us is still trying to overcome the preconceived notion that improv is supposed to be funny all the time. Corey emphasized again that humor often just happens without us trying, and that forcing ourselves to “be clever” can put a serious damper on our creativity and comfort within each exercise. That’s a pretty big shift in thinking for many people, since I think all of us equate improv with humor. But hopefully it’ll get easier as the weeks go by.
*Get it? Because there isn’t actually a ball to catch! Hence the quotes!