Austin Improv

I'm slooooowly working on putting a practice group together (with the goal of being a troupe someday), and right now we have 3 enthusiastic people and are running with that. We get along well, we like each other's styles, we play well together.

However, our (not vast) experience is with much larger groups - at least 6, and more 8-10. What games (mainly short form, though we'd like to explore longform), exercises and warmups could you recommend for 3? I tried searching past threads on here without much luck.

Thanks!

I recently remembered something Asaf did that was fun. You could do it with 8 people but I'm certain 3 people will have fun with this.


Have one person be "in the middle." Now the people in the circle take turns and endow that person with facts, traits, or quirks:


"Your mother was a famous rock climber."

"Your name is Edgar Gwinn."

"You have a whole closet full of corduroy jackets."

"You own a barber shop."

"You are not a barber."

"You've never used a bicycle."

"Flowers are terrifying because you think they explode at random."


NOW the person "in the middle" has to give a quick little monologue as that character. Here's the trick. Let the monologist know they don't need to juggle all the quirks. In other words not everything has to stick. They can ignore whatever endowments they want & take only the ones which inspire them in the moment.

Also endowers will be compelled to create narrative patterns (each suggestion leads to the next like the barber example) so feel free to play with a rule that states the suggestions must be fairly non-related. This will allow the monologist more texture and broader choices to play with.

Sheriff Bandit Victim

Here is an embarrassing video of me setting it up.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OVQT4x9iGs[/youtube]

I hope Jill Bernard will jump in and explain the exercise where two people are doing a scene and one person has a wingman/supporter.

Anything playing with status would be super fun I'm sure. I like the exercise where each person draws a card from a deck, and holds it to their forehead, without looking at it, so that you can see the other people's cards but not your own. The cards represent your status: the higher the number, the higher status you are.

valetoile wrote:I hope Jill Bernard will jump in and explain the exercise where two people are doing a scene and one person has a wingman/supporter.

I will confess to getting a little giddy when I see Jill respond to my posts....

Also, these are good suggestions, thanks! Now we just have to get all three of us in the same place at the same time.

That's hilarious because I felt like I never fully made that exercise work out. The premise is solid, one person functions as the voice in the other players head giving positive boosts and reinforcing their point of view. But the players never really get what I'm trying to say.

Here's a challenging 3 person scene exercise that I enjoy:

All three folks up and in the scene. Rule is that only two people in the scene can be having a conversation at any given time. The third person is there, just doing object work and whatnot in the background. Try to find natural shifts to different pairings/conversations. It feels a bit like a monoscene, insofar that you're looking for natural shifts in focus within the same setting. Lets you practice shifting scene focus, doing background work to support the reality of a scene, etc.

jillybee72 wrote:That's hilarious because I felt like I never fully made that exercise work out. The premise is solid, one person functions as the voice in the other players head giving positive boosts and reinforcing their point of view. But the players never really get what I'm trying to say.

ooh, i'd love to try that! like they're an invisible hype man!

dcjohn wrote:Here's a challenging 3 person scene exercise that I enjoy:
All three folks up and in the scene. Rule is that only two people in the scene can be having a conversation at any given time. The third person is there, just doing object work and whatnot in the background. Try to find natural shifts to different pairings/conversations. It feels a bit like a monoscene, insofar that you're looking for natural shifts in focus within the same setting. Lets you practice shifting scene focus, doing background work to support the reality of a scene, etc.

John I love this. I have so few object work exercises so I'll definitely be trying this. If you can brainstorm a good one for multitasking object work AND talking at the same time I'd love to hear it.

My motor skills can really only juggle one or the other unless I challenge myself.

As a joke, from a shortform show that went really off the rails we came up with Sit, Stand, Chicken. A 3 person scene where at any given time one person sits, one stands, the other is a chicken, the key of which is to flow back and fourth and cause the scene players to chaotically switch while still playing the scene. It's ridiculous. BTW the Chicken doesn't speak english, only chicken.

I have a similar game called Party Quacks. It's where an improviser hosts a party & proceeds to determine that each guest is a duck.