Reverse Everything Test

From Weekly I/O#113


When you hear a statement, reverse it and see if the opposite is also true. Don't accept something just because it's the convenient option.

Book: Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre

From educator and theatre director Keith Johnstone:

At about the age of nine I decided never to believe anything because it was convenient. I began reversing every statement to see if the opposite was also true. This is so much a habit with me that I hardly notice I’m doing it any more. As soon as you put a ‘not’ into an assertion, a whole range of other possibilities opens out— especially in drama, where everything is supposition anyway.

When I began teaching, it was very natural for me to reverse everything my own teachers had done. I got my actors to make faces, insult each other, always leap before they looked, to scream and shout and misbehave in all sorts of ingenious ways. It was like having a whole tradition of improvisation teaching behind me. In a normal education everything is designed to suppress spontaneity, but I wanted to develop it.

Use it to examine most of the "wisdom" on social media and see how many pass.


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