Analogies: Barn door

Your mouth is a barn door.
Your body is the barn.
Want the good stuff to stay in your body and move the body and make good things happen? Keep the goddamn barn door shut.

Words are an expression of energy. But they’re not theater.
In improv, you are creating theater. So keep the energy in your body for as long as you can. While it’s in there, it will keep moving around and moving you around.

Show it before you say it. Make that your rule.

And then a lot of the time you will not need to say it.

Think of your mouth as that barn door – once the energy of the moment has done its job, and you’re ready to move to the next moment, you can let it out by saying something about it. But if you still need those cows to do stuff for you; well, keep ’em in there, and let ’em shake the barn.