Being able to deliver the goods on stage is awesome. It feels really good to get laughs, and it feels even better knowing how to do it. It’s a real high… but it’s a local high. We can camp there, but we can do better if we are willing to spend a night or two in a valley.

Sleeping in a valley sucks. Cold air pours through at night. If it rains, there will be a flash flood and your fire will get swamped. You really hope it is worth it.

Maybe your night in the valley is a rocky scene, or your group has a string of coldly received shows as it tries new things. The low could even be a theater having its fire blown out, night after night after night, as it heads in a new direction.

Reliability means you’ll never sleep in a stream bed… but you’ll also be stuck. The people you play with may come to expect things of you on stage, and they may begin to think your habits are your limits. Sometimes the way out of this is downhill.

I’m in a valley right now. For years, I’ve place enormous pressure on myself to never leave the stage without having made sure my scene-partners and I make it to the top of a hill. Grounding a wild idea, adding a wild spin to a grounded idea, finding a button… These were just ways to keep from going too far from where I started.

The inherent agreeableness that Yes, And cultivates can cause a whole group to stay in one place. Someone decides, consciously or not, that this is the highest hill (or at least high enough). Perhaps they want to build a tower there… and everyone gets roped into constructing the folly. Or maybe the rest of the group begins a purposeful march, knowing it will be rough for a while… until the ensemble gets dragged back after one cold night because of a single stubborn or inflexible player.

If we refuse to go further than is comfortable, never pushing through our frontiers, then let’s be honest about what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. Maybe we’re scared, or tired. Maybe we’ve done an extensive survey and are settling down.

We shouldn’t begrudge anyone that wants to see what’s over the horizon.