He's as lovely as a ____________.

He's as lovely as a ____________., originally uploaded by freestylereporg.

Improv is like writing in three dimensions. A character is drawn by a gesture, articulated by a tone of voice. A setting comes to life through a mimed door or a shudder.

As improvisors, we like to sit down at the table with writers, and dig into the literary buffet. Two of our favorite dishes are similes and metaphors. A game we play in our school shows, Simile and Metaphor Fill In the Blank, is as fun as pies in the face, as compelling as a banana peel waiting for the unsuspecting, as challenging as flipping a pancake and landing it back in the pan.

We get audience volunteers - who know what nouns are and are not afraid to use them! - to come up on stage. We begin improvising a scene, co-creating characters, setting and story. But, at any moment, we will stop in the middle of a sentence and point to one of the volunteers, who's job is to spontaneously say a noun. It could be anything, maybe just whatever they happen to be looking at that moment. Then we take that noun and turn it into a simile or a metaphor that supports the scene.

"He's as lovely as a