I love the word yes. Yes is a magic word that can cause whole worlds to appear before your eyes. Yes is the password to deep sanctums of knowledge, wisdom, and wonder. Yes is an invitation to create to continue, to converse, to collaborate. Strange how such a mystical and powerful word can be misused or just plain forgotten in times of stress.

I tell my students and my colleagues that in rehearsal my default answer to any question is YES. Yes, let’s rehearse it standing on our heads. Yes let’s do the scene over the phone while sitting next to each other. Yes let’s rehearse drunk, high, happy, sad, hungry. My yes is almost always followed with the word “and”. And is the connective tissue that binds ideas into a creative synthesis. Two yeses are very good. “Yes, and…” is the first step in binding two good ideas into a single more powerful idea.

In rehearsal, and in life make Yes your default and see for yourself what wonderful things occur.