Someone shouts a suggestion — “Let’s go to the moon!” — and the entire class answers “Yes, let’s!” and immediately does it, together, with full commitment. Then someone else shouts the next idea. That is the whole game, and it is the beating heart of improvisation: every idea is accepted, every idea is acted on, and nobody’s offer dies in the air. Yes, Let’s trains the habit that Improvisation Showcase depends on — treating a partner’s offer as a gift to build on rather than a problem to fix.
How to run it
- Everyone mills about the room, walking neutrally.
- Anyone, at any time, calls out an activity: “Let’s paddle a canoe!” “Let’s shovel the driveway!” “Let’s sneak past a sleeping dragon!”
- The entire class responds “Yes, let’s!” — out loud, together — and everyone launches into the activity with total commitment.
- Play the activity for fifteen or twenty seconds, until a new suggestion arrives. Then accept that one just as fully. There are no votes, no vetoes, and no “but we just did something like that.”
- End on a suggestion that gathers the group — “Let’s take a bow!”
One variation
Yes, Let’s in role: every suggestion must come from an agreed character — astronauts on a failing station, pirates burying treasure. Now each accepted offer also builds a shared story, and the game shades into scene work almost by accident.
The offer you accept beats the offer you had
Halfway through someone else’s canoe trip you will think of a better idea. Good — keep paddling. The game is not a contest for whose suggestion wins; it is training your body to say yes first. Your idea will get its turn, and it will land in a group trained to say yes to it.
Curriculum connection
A1.3
use role play to explore, develop, and represent themes, ideas, characters, feelings, and beliefs in producing drama works (e.g., use improvisation exercises to explore how they might think, feel, and act in specific real-life situations; write in role as a character who is reflecting on the people, events, and relationships affected by a personal, social, or environmental issue)
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