Performance Games
This is a list of improv performance games – that is, games you can use on stage, in front of a paying audience. They can also be used in a workshop. They range from games with a strong gimmick and tight structure, to games that can be a loose framework for all kinds of different scenes.
Workshop Games
These are games best suited to an improv workshop or class. They give training in improv principles, but are not typically the sort of thing you’d perform for an audience.
Blog
Reactions and Emotions
It’s said that “acting is reacting.” It means that the key to being a good actor or improviser is mostly about how well you react emotionally to each thing another performer says or does. When a line is delivered well by an actor, it makes an impact on an audience....
Sticky Stage
Once a players has entered a scene, it’s hard to leave again. Improv scenes often accumulate more and more characters. That’s the “sticky stage” phenomenon, and it makes it harder to tell a story. Let’s say Jean works in a factory with coworker Sandra. Sandra is...
Act Naturally
Many performers who can happily play big characters in a scene become awkward and uncomfortable when they have to talk to an audience. Sometimes, a shift in attitude can help. When I was a kid, a man named Jack Hargreaves was a familiar face on British TV, usually...
This was supposed to be a book
One of the traps you can fall into with improv is trying to create a final, once-and-for-all list of improv games. I had one friend who compiled hundreds of games into a fat binder, and was constantly reworking and updating his ultimate improv opus. He died before it...