Justify that!

There were a lot of magic moments and huge laughs at the recent ImproCOG workshop delivered at Improvention 2025 in Canberra. One of these moments happened when we were exploring the cognitive verb justify. To justify something we need to provide reasons (including logic based details, and/or evidence and data) to support your statement. One of the games we use to play with this cognitive verb (and McKinnon's work on creativity established it is important to play with ideas) is "pick up lines of dialogue". In this adult age class I was using random lines of dialogue with famous movie lines. Improvisers have to set up their idea first then grab a line of dialogue and speak it aloud, then they have to justify why they said that line. For example a player might say "hey Rachel thanks for meeting me, I really appreciated your text this morning when you said [draw line of dialogue and read aloud] ... here's looking at you kid".....[audience reaction]....yes I realise I am much younger than you and you think I am a child, but I know you wanted to see me in person.....so here I am".

Jusitfy also draws in another important cognitive verb explain - to make an idea clearer by adding in extra details and context. It is easy to see the overlap between these 2 cognitive verbs.

In one of our scenes I placed 2 improvisers in a troubled relationship and they were seeking counselling from a third improviser. The actor playing the counsellor started the scene with "Thanks for coming in today, here at Healthcare Counselling we have a motto [draws a line of dialogue}....you talkin' to me?.....well yes, we need to talk., that's why you're here".

The whole group exploded in laughter....I said to them we could realistically call "and scene" at that moment, it is unlikely we will ever get a better line to fit that set up. Anyway, we played on and there were some other pearlers in there. Lots of laughs and building vivid memories of this important cognitive verb.