The third thought

[Improv teacher Del Close said] to always go to your third thought. Sounds really simple, but when you’re onstage, your first thought is knee-jerk. Your second thought is usually okay, but not great. Del would make you stay in a scene until you found your third thought, which was a little above and beyond what most other teachers would suggest. Basically, he wanted your third thought for your character choice, your third thought for your premise or your scene, your third thought for your heightened move…Another lesson was to always play to the top of your intelligence. If you treat the audience like poets and geniuses, that’s what they will become.

—Adam McKay, in an interview with Mike Sacks in Poking a Dead Frog