Typewriter

Typewriter is a storytelling game. Ask the audience for (something like) “the title of a story that’s never been written.” One player, who is the “author” of the story, sits downstage, off to one side, and mime-types their story on a typewriter or laptop. The author speaks aloud the words they’re typing.

AUTHOR: It was an ordinary day in the Rogers home. Gerry Rogers and his wife Sandy were discussing where to go for their family vacation.

Two other team members jump in to play this scene.

SANDY: How about Paris? Or Rome? Or even Australia!

GERRY: Or we could do what we usually do, head out of town and enjoy a week by the Merryville Duck Pond.

AUTHOR: Gerry did not like change in his life. The couple discussed and then argued…

As the author types, other players can silently mime the argument in the background.

AUTHOR: … but nothing would shift him. Four weeks later, they stepped out of their car at the Hotel Merryville, overlooking the duck pond. But a terrible sight met their eyes. The hotel had burned down. And where the duck pond had been, there was now a huge hole, a tunnel leading down into the earth.

GERRY: I can’t believe it! What’s happened here?

SANDY: We need to find out! Honey, I think we have to explore that dark tunnel.

The focus goes back and forth between author and players. The author pays attention to the scene, thinking about what it might need. The range of possibilities is very wide – which makes this a harder game for the typist that it looks! Here are a few options:

• Change the time and place: “Thirty minutes later, the couple were scrambling down the hole, to explore the mysterious tunnel”
• Add an emotion: “Gerry was tired of being told what to do. He became angry.”
• Change the characters: “Meanwhile, two men were watching the house from a nearby hill. They were detectives, called into investigate the goings on around the hotel.” (If there are just two performers, the people playing Gerry and Sandy will now play two different characters.)
• The author can throw a challenge to the players, describing situations that require them to play many characters: “Gerry went through the marketplace. He talked to many people, asking if they had seen any sign of Sandy.”
• The author should introduce changes, but they shouldn’t be random leaps. Try to tell a story.

The author shouldn’t just describe the things we can already see, or give historical context. This may seem obvious, but it often happens in practice. If the couple has just had an argument, don’t describe how devastated they both feel, or explain how it’s the third argument they’ve had this month – it might add psychological depth, but it doesn’t give the actors much to respond to or move the story forward. Instead, focus on what happens next. Describe how someone pulls out a gun, or describe his slow decline over the next few months, as he wanders the streets alone.

The gimmick of this game is the typing. Some people play with this element, typing something, then deleting it.

AUTHOR: Gerry was a tall, proud, good looking hunk.

A player steps forward as this proud character. Then the typist changes his mind.

AUTHOR: No, that’s too obvious. Delete-delete-delete… Gerry was a small, skinny, sickly man, whose nose was perpetually running.

The player now hunches over and tries to look skinny and sickly.

Aside from this sort of trick, the same techniques used in a typewriter scene can also be used in a narrated scene, with an narrator who steps on stage and tells the story to the audience.