“The bread and butter of improv,” says Salit, “is hearing offers.” The first principle of improvisation—hearing offers—hinges on attunement, leaving our own perspective to inhabit the perspective of another. And to master this aspect of improvisation, we must rethink our understanding of what it is to listen and what constitutes an offer. For all the listening we do each day—by some estimates, it occupies one-fourth of our waking hours6—it’s remarkable how profoundly we neglect this skill. As the American philosopher Mortimer Adler wrote thirty years ago: Is anyone anywhere taught how to
...more
