Leave for the Same Reason
Following on from stop at the same time, I enjoy ‘leave for the same reason’. This is an exercise I’ve read in Impro for Storytellers many times, but never tried until recently. Turns out it was just what I was looking for.
How I play it,
Four chairs in a line. Four people up. The aim of the game is, everyone must leave for the same reason. But! No talking.
Some groups will get this first time, others will struggle a bit. Once they’ve succeeded a few times, usually as a result of very strong mime offers from one person (miming a bus timetable, checking watch, everyone gets on the bus) we add in another rule.
Now, just like with stop at the same time, you’ve got to make it so I can’t guess who’s idea it was.
This is where things get really interesting. The players have to totally focus on what the others are doing if they want to succeed. If they’re struggling I’ll either either side coach a little (”Dan just yawned.” “Emma just scratched her arm”), or we might stop and ask the audience what possibilities they saw. I’ll also rewind them if I can tell one person is leading. After a while we start to see players amazingly in sync with one another, picking up and amplifying offers made by others (one of my students very astutely compared it speak in one voice). An exciting discovery we might make at this point is that other players are always making offers, even if they don’t realize it, we just have to look for them.
I sometimes teach this along with the Sandy Carroll games from the Improv Handbook (also known as ‘Yes, Sounds good to me, I’ll go along with that’).
January 27th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
We ran our apprentices through this at Unexpected Productions, as some of them had never taken our improv 100 class. It was really interesting to see how many improv tendencies are evident in the game. The scene drivers kept introducing things, the anxious improvisers kept jerking their heads to the side, and those who have trouble listening kept missing out on what the other two improvisers had discovered. Pretty amazing for one exercise. I’ve still never seen it in Theatresports, though.
January 28th, 2010 at 3:05 am
I think I could play it for hours. It certainly gets more interesting after people have used up the obvious offers.
Not sure if I’m brave enough to use it as a performance game, and yet I feel like it could *almost* work.
August 15th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
Remember the old saying that you should never condescend to your audience. I reckon if it’s hillarious in a workshop it’ll be hillarious in front of a paying crowd. The main question with putting ‘experiments’ in front of an audience is how, as an MC, you broach the game. ie why are we getting the players to do this for you, the audience. Do things need to be explicable within the wider context of the show?