playing with his feminine sensibility
It’s misunderstood because it's fairly meaningless and not very actionable.
I consider myself a UCB guy, like an old uncle from the old country, and I think they get their balls busted for their approach because from a psychological perspective (think NLP - Neuro Linguistic Programming - here all you psych nerds!) the approach isn't going to come naturally or easily for 2/3 of all people, based on their learning style.
It's essentially why improv rules that begin with the word "Don't" are largely unhelpful bullshit once you're a week removed from learning them.
So now, if you know how you feel, then each line that's uttered in the scene, each point of environment that's engaged, is an opportunity to discover for yourself and reflect to your scene partner (and to the audience, though, in pure scenic moments between characters, we are not in consideration of the audience) the journey of "how you are."
And remember, Listening is a willingness to change. The ACTING happens during the willingness...what does "willingness" look like? What does Jealousy's "willingness to change" look like? Those are the left brain questions, but the right brain, the interpersonal listening, is playing off of the emotional cues you pick up from your scene partner and allowing them to work on you, moment to moment, with "honesty." And in a sense, the "working on you" is just "listening" and acknowledging that each successive moment has either greater alignment or conflict than the proceeding moment.
This creates the illusion that we are "affecting each other" and may lead us to that actual sensation, so we can resume playing the moments "honestly" and without an agenda like thinking about curiosity and suspicion in our exchange.
PAM: And take the last two minutes to plug your current shows where people might have a good chance of seeing you regularly perform in Chicago.
JOE: Armando on Monday nights at iO Chicago. Deltones on one or two Saturdays a month at iO Chicago. Chicago Improv Festival, last full week of April, probably the next time BASSPROV plays in Chicago.
Pam Victor is the founding member of The Ha-Ha’s, and she producesThe Happier Valley Comedy Shows in Northampton, MA. Pam directs, produces and performs in the hot, new comic soap opera web series "Silent H, Deadly H". Pam also writes mostly humorous, mostly true essays and reviews of books, movies and tea on her blog,"My Nephew is a Poodle."