improvnonsense:

I get in trouble for saying that because I deliberately say it in a jerk manner. KNOW EVERYTHING. When someone says “I didn’t know the movie my partner was mentioning” I’ll sometimes say “Well, you don’t HAVE to know it but it would be easier if you knew it.”

And then people are like “Why do I have to like Star Wars?”

And I say “Who said anything about Star Wars?”

“All these improv nerd boys love Star Wars and can’t stop mentioning it. I hate that HAVE to know it.”

I know. It’s annoying.

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My boyfriend is a programmer. I didn’t know anything about programming when I first started dating him. I didn’t end up learning how to program (God knows I wouldn’t enjoy being a programmer. It’s just not my thing). However, I asked and read about what he basically does. I know basics, like there are coding languages, the names of the coding languages, the difference between a front end developer and a back end developer. I know these things so when he has a bad day at work, a good day at work, or makes fun of a website, I can understand, relate and carry out a basic conversation with him about it. Was it annoying to read up about it? Not really. It only took, like, ten minutes and I care about my relationship with him. If I refused to learn about programming I would have never been able to understand an aspect of my boyfriend.

You can take that anecdote and apply it to this topic being discussed.

We are improvisers. We have to portray many types of people in our shows/sets and play off of many types of people. Part of our job is to understand and relate to as many types of human beings as possible. We definitely cannot afford to be ignorant on a topic that comes up often on our teams, in our classes, in our culture and on our planet. Strive to be that improviser that can improvise with anyone. Part of being able to do that is being able to relate and understand many aspects and types of people on a basic level.

It doesn’t take that long to watch a movie and it takes even shorter to read about the plot or watch an often referenced scene from that movie. It doesn’t take that long to read up on any reference. So if you are annoyed that you have to learn about, the common example, “Star Wars,” suck it up. You’re an improviser. You have to.