Improv level: Advanced
If the essence of drama is conflict, this challenge will help you build some nuance into your dramatic scene work while also helping you avoid the temptation of going for the laugh. Improv is more than comedy, and comedy is funnier when you don't play it for the laugh. Make it real.
Here's the challenge: Create a scene based on this quote --
Defend to stabilize, even neutralize, but not to destroy.
It's your theme. It's your structure. It's your turn...
-- doug smith
Improv Level: Advanced
I'm currently writing this on Google's Blogger platform and it has the interesting feature of allowing you to date a post into the past. I'll do that with this post as an example. I'm writing it on July 13, 2025 but I'm going to send it back in time -- not far, just a nudge, say perhaps June, 2025.
You've seen many examples of time travel in movies, plays, and literature so now it's your turn. Create a scene with this premise: You can go back to any one day in your life and re-live or change it. That's the scene: the decision to change it and then what happens next.
Based on what you know about time-travel, what would be the side-effects? What would be the results? What would be funny about any of that?
Now go. Your turn!
-- doug smith
We make ego into a bad word but try excelling without it.
That tension between control and out-of-control? That's magic!
-- doug smith
Get bold or get forgotten!
Who's your favorite actor?
What performer grabs your attention?
When you are on stage where is YOUR focus?
There is a place for nuance. There is a time for subtlety. And, there is a time for drama!
Get bold or get forgotten!
-- doug smith
Build a scene from this quote:
Hatred burns the hater more than the one hated.
-- doug smith
The price of evil is paid long after the evil is forgotten.
-- doug smith
Reading someone's descriptive intro of themselves a while ago I remember that they said they were a poet and a memoirist. Hmmm. How do they live? How do they earn money? Are they so successful with social media ad dollars (or something else?) that jobs are even a consideration?
Far be it for me to judge but seriously, doesn't it take a large swallow of solipsistic hubris to declare oneself a memoirist?
Oh, truthfully, everyone SHOULD be a memoirist and keep some kind of journal (says the man on volume 63 of his) but to announce it to the world? Maybe, yes! Good for her!
What do you think is IN those memoirs? Juicy stuff? Dramatic stuff? Profound stuff?
That's the topic of your scene: now improv it!
-- doug smith
Improv Level: Advanced
Location: anywhere
Situation: Time travel has been unlocked without sending you the memo. Start any scene and at some point (in time!) everyone freezes, except for one person who then gently rearranges the scene, snaps their fingers (or rings a bell, because bells are nice!) and the scene resumes with the now altered time change.
Bonus Level: Include "easter egg" references to other time travel sources.
-- doug smith
How it works:
Use the following quote in your poem anywhere:
Add more of you to who you are
and you'll be able to travel far
It could be at the beginning, in the middle, at the end -- anywhere that suits you. You could even repeat it as often as you like, it is entirely yours to play with.
Notes:
Yes, this is improv so let it flow and yes it is poetry because improv is more than acting and because this site is intended to be a full tilt creativity generator.
Generate!
-- doug smith
Use the following quote to develop an improvised scene in three parts:
Resistance causes friction; friction causes fire, and fire burns.
Optional part four:
Resolve the fire.
Prompt:
"If love is the natural order of things, we should stop resisting..."
Situation:
Any conflict. Contrast that conflict into a more natural order. Wind it down. Search for peace.
"How do you make that happen?"
"That's the challenge..."
The more we pretend the past doesn't matter the more likely it is to haunt us.
Prompt:
Improvise a scene during which at least one character avoids dealing with the past -- its thoughts, its actions, and its consequences.
Notes:
It's drama, so of course, ramp up the stakes and the consequences
-- doug smith
What if we could not acknowledge that we are not who we used to be?
And, what if we could?
-- doug smith
