improvarama

Topic: Improv  Goal: Create a new and amusing scene using a quote. Prompt: Use this quote to prompt your improvisation:  Life is opportunity. What we believe can uncover -- or cover over that opportunity. What you believe is up to you. Coaching: Create distinctions in the characters. Who sees opportunity in the darkest situations? What kind of situation are you creating? In the improv, find problems that you can solve together. Try turning conflict into collaboration.  

Topic: Improv  Goal: Create a new and amusing scene. Prompt: Use this quote to prompt your improvisation:  What you see in the mirror is not what the world sees. Coaching: What do you hope to see? Why would anyone see anything else? What are you afraid others might see? How do people decide what they see about you? What does one character in the scene want that they cannot have?

Status is in every scene. People jockey for the top spot. Conflict spins out of the struggle to be recognized, to be in control, to win. Improvise a scene using this prompt: The struggle for status inevitably disappoints. Have fun!  

Build a scene inspired by this quote: If forgiveness was easy we would never hesitate to forgive. Key questions include: What's the conflict? What do your characters want? Where are you? No need to overcomplicate the scene. Simply supply a need for forgiveness and the obstacle that makes it hard to forgive. -- doug smith

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

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

Some people will do things that will never make sense, and still we go on. -- 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

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

When money rules, thieves will prosper. -- doug smith  

Opening Options:   Introduce the prompt by announcing it (with one person or several in unison), OR by walking across the space carrying a sign that says "If perfection was easy..." OR by writing it on a white board or chalk board. Build the scene based on the concept:   If perfection was easy we'd be bored out of our minds. Develop the scene by preventing boredom by making sure that nothing any of the characters do is easy. -- doug smith  

Here is a prompt for a silent improv sketch: The ego is lonely until it discovers others. Go.  -- doug smith

Premise:   Sometimes we learn a lesson too late to help us while we're learning it...we have to use it later. Scene: Improvise a scene where that premise becomes clear. Characters should struggle with at least three obstacles and vanquish none of them, yet bring the scene to a close with their realizations. Suggested Obstacles (but you can decide): Your point of view could be wrong. You may have created an enemy who will harm you. Throwing money at a problem may not solve it.

A patient in the emergency room presents with the emergency that suddenly life is not real and if we're not all careful we will all melt away. RAISE THE STAKES: Other players catch the condition.  

A curious mail deliverer asks detailed and endless questions of the receivers of the mail.  RAISE THE STAKES: Not only answer the questions, but take it to another level of "nobody needs to know" detail. Reverse the flow and interrogate the mail person.

A carpenter, who firmly believes that "there are no absolutes" builds a house for someone who thinks that perhaps 12 inches IS a foot and a right angle IS 90 degrees and walls should hold up. RAISE THE STAKES: Levitating tools.