The Games

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533 "a priest, a rabbi, and a ..." A to Z Academy Awards Alter-ego American Musical Arms-expert Backwards and forwards Bartender Blind freeze Call-in-radio show Chain-Murder (P.O.W.) Changing channels Character circle Character Offer Character stream Cliché Columns Conduct-a-gripe Crime-scene Customs agent Da-do-run-run Dating Game (Love Connection) Day-in-the-life Directed freeze Director's Choice Elevator Emotion Zones Emotional Roller Coaster Entrances and Exits Every-day Olympics Fairy-tale Creation Fairy-tale newscast Family Dinner Famous Person Cafe First line/last line Foreign Expert Four ways to die fxXu (FX by You) Gibberish Gospel-Tune Half-life Harold Interpretations Interrogation Jail-Bird Jeopardy Jump-styles Limerick Lines from a Hat (Whip it Out) MacGyver Madrigal Magazine panel McLaughlin Group Minor Characters Movie critics Mr. Subliminal Musical Object Nightmare No-rules improv Objection One-letter Improv One-word story Our town Pan-left, Pan-right Party Quirks Play-book Pledge break P.O.V. (point-of-view) Press Conference Prop-jokes Puppets (moving bodies) Questions Record commercial Return-a-product Righting-a-wrong Royal Expert Rumble Say It Scene-in-verse (or rhyme off challenge game) Schizo Script writers Sibling Rivalry Sit-Stand-Kneel (or Bend) Slide-Show Song Show-case Sound Effects Space Jump Stereo expert Story-story-die Stunt Doubles Sub-titles Super-hero Space jump That Damn Clap Three-things-to-do Three-things-to-say Three-way dub Three-headed expert Thumbs-up, Thumbs-downTwo Utes (Film noir) Two-headed expert What happens next World's Worst Yes, and You sick bastard Ralph

Description

Here you would find a description of a game, if you weren't too lazy to click on one of them. Kids these days...no sense of duty!

533

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Same as "a priest, a rabbi, and a....." except the format is "533 'blanks' walk into a bar and order a drink, bartender says, I'm sorry but we don't serve 'blanks' here, and the 'blanks' reply,"

"A priest, a rabbi, and a ..."

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Pun game where get every-day objects from the audience, improvers step up and start joke with a priest, a rabbi, and the object walk into the bar and make up bad pun joke about the object.

A to Z

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Number of actors: 2

Audience Participation: Get a letter of the alphabet, and either a location or a relationship.

How it works: A scene is performed where each actor's sentence must start with successive letters of the alphabet, starting and ending with the letter chosen by the audience. Say, if the first actor's sentence starts with the letter b, then the other actor's next sentence must start with the letter c.

Tips: You'd be surprised at how hard it is for some people to remember their alphabet. Try to keep the scene very tight with short back and forth dialogue; if sentences run-on for too long the other actor is likely to forget what the next letter is. You obviously don't want any scene to drag, and in this game long lines just compound the fact. If you can, try to set-up your partner for his next letter. Also, for hard letters like x, you can fudge things, like using eXactly, also c for k switches work (albeit you'll get boos from the audience, but that's usually the fun of it). I'd say use relationship instead of setting, because if you have a good relationship, characters, and conflict set-up early, A to Z is great and it really flies, even when its bad though it seems to come off ok.

Academy Awards

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Do boring scene, every time outside troupe member blows the whistle, the actor speaking must step out and do a cheesy academy-award winning monologue.

Alter-ego

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Two actor scene getting relationship, the other two are the voices inside their heads. Interplay between voices and actors, funny if theirs contradictions in this game, action-action-action.

American Musical

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Actors get three topics from the audience, (i.e... Life hopes, something that bugs them, something they did today, etc.) and get a location. Three actors do hammed up scene, with gushy/excited/cheesy build-ups to songs, make sure all the songs have different distinct styles, end scene on the last song.

Arms-expert

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Expert leaves the room, get his expertise, as an occupation, then object not usually related to that occupation, and then non-geographical location not related. Host interacts with the expert, and another person is the expert's hands and gives clues.

Backwards and forwards

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Two actors, get location or relationship, do about a one-minute scene working backwards to a first line, and then do the same scene forward to see if it makes sense.

Bartender

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One actor is the bartender, one is a barfly, and three are patrons. Each patron comes in separately and sings a song to the bartender about a problem s/he has about a noun given by the audience in a musical style given by the audience. The then bartender sings back a solution to the patron. Can also be done as psychiatrist and patient.

Blind freeze

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Troupe members form line with backs turned. Director has audience member mold the first two actors into a shape, the director starts the scene and then calls freeze when he likes, the next actor turns around, tags one of the actors out of the scene immediately, and then starts a new scene by justifying the physical position the previous two actors were in. Game continues until the director feels like ending it (usually on a kicker line).

Call-in-radio show

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Expert and talk-show host, and funny characters call in and ask questions.

Chain-Murder (P.O.W.)

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Send out two people and one audience member. Fourth person remains and gets place, occupation, and murder weapon from the audience. First troupe member returns, original person must explain the three things to them in gibberish mime, when they get each thing they hi-fi, when the murder weapon is gotten, the audience yells, "die", and they do so. Then the three things are explained to the audience member, and then to the last troupe member. Then we find out if the three things have changed from person to person.

Changing channels

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Three sets of two actors, director gets three TV show styles and topic from the audience, the three shows must all incorporate the topic, director (or audience) member can change channels and even fast-forward, reverse, slow-motion, tracking, etc. the scene.

Character circle

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Get a noun from the audience. Two people start off a scene, at some point the next person in line (or any other troupe member if doing free-form) tags one of the actors out and starts a new scene with the only rule that the actor remains has to stay the same character. Tagging-out continues until someone stops the game, usually at a high point. Best to not leave one person in for more than three turns and it's good to circle back to ideas presented in the earlier scenes.

Character Offer

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Start off by getting location and wacky character name, that character starts off scene, introduces next character with a wacky name that relates to the current scene, they interact for a bit, then the first person leaves, then the second person, introduces next character, and so forth. The scene usually ends when a prescribed number of actors have entered and left the scene.

Character stream

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Get a non-geographical location. whole troupe performs split up into two sides. start with two actors in the scene. host of game eventually tells one actor to leave and brings in one actor from the other side; host continues to do this, rotating from one side to the other, and makes scenes go faster and faster until stopping at a high point. Best if two sides are uneven, so same characters aren't always in the scene together.

Cliché

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One person goes out, get a cliché from the audience, actor and other actors from the troupe give them hints on guessing the clue, person comes out usually and first thing says an outlandish guess, like "its raining cats and dogs out there."

Columns

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Two audience members complete improvers sentences, get an occupation.

Conduct-a-gripe

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Get general gripe topic from the audience, then four sub-topics (or just 4 topics), director then conducts the gripers like an orchestra (faster slower louder softer), bringing people in and out, until all four people are on and a crescendo to a big finish with the director pointing to one actor who yells, "and that's what pisses me off!"

Crime-scene

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Cop interrogating witness. Get from audience location and object not related to that location. Distraught witness re-tells murder they saw committed with that object at the crime scene about two friends of theirs (use improvers real names) and improvers in question that he describes act the scene out as it happens. Then cop corrects him and re-tells the scene differently. Storytellers should make actors do a lot of physical action.

Customs agent

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One person leaves, get from audience country that they are coming from, wacky contraband, and mode of transportation. Person comes in and has to work with customs agent/other troupe members in order to guess the three things.

Da-do-run-run

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Elimination game follows the song, get first name from audience, keep song going rhyming that name, until someone repeats or can't think up a rhyme.

Dating Game (Love Connection)

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Get audience member, three troupe members are the bachelors, imitate either dating game or Love connection style, get traits/occupations for bachelors, audience member is picked at beginning of show and writes their questions ahead of time.

Day-in-the-life

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Get audience member's day (or story from their life) so far, improvers act it out in a funny, exaggerated way.

Directed freeze

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Same as blind freeze, except outside-scene actors can see the action, but when the director yells freeze he tells a certain outside-scene troupe member to go in for a certain in-scene troupe member.

Director's Choice

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Number of actors: 3 and a director

How it works: First the director asks for a location, the three actor's do a short, simple scene at that location. The director then asks for an emotion, and the actor's redo the scene all displaying that emotion. He then asks for movie genre, and the scene is redone in that style. And finally a literary style is asked for and the scene is re-performed as such. Actors are encouraged to change things from the basic scene as they see fit for the new style. Or third possibility is TV style, ask for all three before-hand.

Option: Do starting scene as a fairy tale. Or get first-line and last-line.

Elevator

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One person goes out of the room, other person gets item from the audience that they are buying at the mall/department store. Person comes in and they are the elevator operator, game host does not leave the elevator until the operator has guessed the item via stopping at floors and saying what items can be found on those floors. At every floor, a troupe member comes in to interact and give clues and then gets off at the next floor. Good to start off with subtle clues and then work up to real obvious ones.

Emotion Zones

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Two actors, get location and three emotions, separate the stage into three sections and assign each an emotion, actors have to have that emotion in that zone, other troupe members can come into the scene.

Emotional Roller Coaster

Number of actors: 2, and a director

Audience participation: Audience gives a long list of emotions (these can be stretch emotions like French or stupid) and a location.

How it works: Scene starts off basic, but the director will call off emotions from his list and one of the actors changes their emotional being; the other actor plays the "straight-man" Scene usually ends with narcolepsy.

Entrances and Exits

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Number of actors: 3-5

Audience participation: The audience gives each actor a word; location.

How it works: Scene starts with two actors on stage the others offstage. Whenever an actor's word is said, that actor must make an entrance if they are off-stage, exit if they are on-stage. Scene ends when all actors are offstage (i.e. when one actor is left on-stage, he says his own word).

Every-day Olympics

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Get every-day activity from audience, have two sportscasters, two competitors, and two on-the-field reporters.

Fairy-tale Creation

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Get made-up fairy-tale name, one person tells that fairy tale, and then other actors act it out.

Fairy-tale newscast

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One newscasters, set-up crime scene of fairy-tale, reporter out in the field, with fairy-tale, character, then have studio expert.

Family Dinner

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Get an audience member to come up to the stage. Have them choose actors in the troupe to play different members of their family at the dinner table. Dinner table scene starts with no further information, if an actor does something out of line with how the audience member thinks that family member should act, he buzzes; if an actor does something that the audience member thinks is in-line with how that family member behaves he dings. Buzzing and dinging can be done by having the audience member hitting the heads of two left-over troupe members. Scene doesn't end until audience member approves of reason for every family member leaving the dinner table.

Famous Person Cafe

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Three actors go out of the room one at a time; when each one goes out, the audience gives the name of a famous person/character that they are. The scene takes place at a cafe with the three famous people sitting at a table. Each person has to guess who they are based on clues given by the waiter and the other two famous people.

First line/last line

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Two person scene, other players can support. Get a first line of dialogue and a last line of dialogue for the scene, players fill in the rest of the dialogue.

Foreign Expert

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Get made-up foreign language, and a topic from the audience, have a host, an interpreter and the expert who speaks in the foreign language and then ask questions of the audience for the expert; can do the experts national anthem at the end.

Four ways to die

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Number of actors: 4

Audience Participation: The audience gives a location and four ways a person could die.

How it works: The scene starts (with usually not everyone on stage), and through the course of the action, each actor must die by one of the 4 ways given. No one is assigned any of the 4 ways, the actors figure out who will die by what way as the scene evolves.

fxXu (FX by You)

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Get an audience member and a story-title from the audience. One troupe member tells the story while two other troupe members act it out in mime and the audience member provides the sound effects on microphone.

Gibberish

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Get a sticky situation for two actors to do a scene. Actors start the scene speaking normally, but whenever the director claps, they would start speaking in gibberish, and then when the director claps again, they revert back to normal speak.

Gospel-Tune

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Tight, rehearsed singing game, where get three things from audience member and save their soul based on those things through song (like last movie seen, favorite movie actor, and last thing bought costing over 100 dollars).

Half-life

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Two actors on-one off get first line/last line from audience and a location. Actors do the first scene in a minute, with third actor coming in about 3/4 the way through. Scene is then done in 30 seconds, 15 seconds, 10 seconds, 5 seconds.

Harold

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Usually 6 to 8 performers.

Get a theme or a noun from the audience. The players usually first performs a brain-storming game like a word association, monologues, an invocation, or any other pre-planned group game. Two actors come out and start a two-person scene based on the theme and/or what's been brainstormed in the opening game. This scene can be supported by the other players via tag-outs, cut-tos, minor characters, inanimate objects, and sound effects - all support should help to clarify the scene/game of the two actors. Eventually someone in the troupe sweeps the scene and starts a new two-person scene. This scene again is eventually swept and a third scene is started. When the third scene is swept, the group then usually goes into a group scene based on the theme and/or what has been established in the scenes. The first two-person scene is then brought back (advisable to have it in a new time and/or place), then the second scene is brought back, and then the third again. A second group game is then usually performed. Finally, one last scene or series of scenes is performed that ties the three scenes and the theme of the Harold together.

Interpretations

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Get a story from someone in the audience. present this situation three different times, rotating the actors playing the different parts and interpreting the situation differently. Can forgo with audience member story (for simplicity) and do three person scene and then rotate actors.

Interrogation

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Good cop/bad cop guessing game, actor playing criminal goes out, get what they did, what famous person they are, and where they did it (non-geographical), they come in, and then the other two actors start their good cop/bad cop interrogation and give the criminal clues to help him guess the three things.

Jail-Bird

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One person goes away, audience gives silly crime that they did, a silly crime and then also usually a famous person. Guard goes out and brings new inmate into the cell where other two actors are two inmates already there, new inmate has to guess crime he did, from clues by the other in-mates and other troupe members who come into the scene. Person should milk it if they know it, saying "you know how tough I am, It took 100 cops to bring me in, I ..." and should always keep using same clue if got one right so far.

Jeopardy

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Have audience write down on pieces of paper five related words that form categories. Alex Trebek-like host brings 3 contestants/characters on, they introduce themselves, host reads five things, characters buzz in, their buzzer must relate to their character, answer the question in the form of a question in a way that relates to their characters.

Jump-styles

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Get about six for each of the following categories: TV genre, movie genre, theater genre, and emotions: do a scene in a given location and director changes genre constantly.

Limerick

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Troupe members stand in a line, host gets name of person in audience and hobby, troupe members do continuous limericks, each taking one line, until one person is eliminated by the host for whatever reason, and then a new limerick topic is taken, limericks go A-A-B-B-A, like "There once was a man from Nantucket, whose xxxx was so long he could xxxx it, he'd do it all day, but then he would say, If my ear was a xxxxx I'd xxxx it."

Lines from a Hat (Whip it Out)

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Number of actors: 2

Audience Participation: During an intermission or before the show, the audience write lines of dialogue on pieces of paper and puts them into a hat. When scene stars a location is given.

How it works: The two actors do a simple scene, but must pull lines intermittently from the hat, read them immediately and incorporate them into the scene. Wackiness ensues.

MacGyver

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Like the show, two actor's (MacGyver and little Jimmy) must save a life-threatening situation or catastrophe, but only have three-objects told to the actors by the audience.

Madrigal

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Three singers, one gets a tabloid headline, one gets something you mother used to always tell you, and third gets something from billboard, bumper sticker, or something on product label, make sure tabloid headline has a famous person's name in it. Director leads singers on an eight count, and they sing their saying in eight, straight once through, when it gets back to the first person, they switch their last word in their saying with another word in someone else's saying, consecutive people keep messing up until director finds one funny enough and then all three sing that in that person's melody (all three people should have very distinctly, different melodies) and then very slowly, with one person punctuating the last word, make sure singers and director give dirty looks when singers are messing up.

Magazine panel

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Get magazine titles, each improver comes up with character that works for that magazine, introduces themselves, then director gets questions from audience members to ask of each person on that panel, or general topic for each person to talk about, special issues, or articles coming up about a topic, closing words, etc.

McLaughlin Group

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Have audiences write down topics on pieces of paper, host acts like John McLaughlin, introduces topics, panelists give wacky answers.

Minor Characters

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Start off with two actors and get location/story-title - two actors start scene - another minor character comes in - when he exits - actually when anybody exits the scene, the scene follows them, try to have a coherent story-line and wrap things up with re-current characters at the end.

Movie critics

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Get a name of a movie, two movie reviewer characters, introduce themselves and the movie, but not the first clip, actors perform the first clip, then hosts set-up the next clip for the actors, then the reviewers give their thumbs up or down (or other thing, preferably, up or down or amount of something, like three avocados), then preview next week's movie (actors do a tableau) and say good-bye.

Mr. Subliminal

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Get occupation for the two actors, one subconscious gets something to be fixated with, the other gets childhood trauma, two actors are the thoughts for the other two actors but the thoughts are fixated on the two topics, escalates to the point where two thoughts rank on each other and get into fight and have to be separated by the actual two people.

Musical Object

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Get from the audience an object and 3 musical styles. 3 actors then sing songs about the same object in the three different song styles.

Nightmare

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Get someone from the audience's day or fear, or embarrassing situation, and portray it as a nightmare, one troupe member plays the audience person, every one else in the troupe acts creep/weird/scary and surrounds them and portrays other people, many stock gimmicks for the game like evil laughter and Wayne/Garth dream sequence wave, works well with a keyboardist.

No-rules improv

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Two actors, audience makes up about four rules for the improv game.

Objection

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Audience gives topic to talk about. One person starts talking until another actor yells objection and states their reason. The judge/timer can sustain or overrule, if they sustain the objecting person starts talking about the subject. Object is to be actor talking after three minutes is up. Objections should start out normal and then get wackier/personal.

One-letter Improv

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Two actor's-get two consonants from the audience. Every sentence (or word!) each actor says must start with their letter.

One-word story

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Get story title. Do one-word story, every sentence, person designated claps, and then actors from the line act out what's just been said.

Our town

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Get non-geographical place, and wacky occurrence, line of improvers, each comes out as a wacky character from the town, and tells the story, have give and take and relationships between the different characters, and a bit of physicality when the story dictates it, but the actors never touch each other, even when interacting.

Pan-left, Pan-right

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Four actors, get four scene subjects (usually nouns, one assigned to each actor), start off with two actors doing scene with the other two actors behind them, the first scene involves the subject of the person to the right and should be initiated by that person (i.e. offers up the first idea), when director yells pan left or pan right, the four actors rotate to the left or to the right so that there are two new actors in the front doing the scene (one always remaining from the previous scene) and the scene once again involves the subject of the person to the right; when a set of actors is returned to, they pick up the scene where they left off previously. Director starts off slow, then quickens the pace of the panning until its frenzied and he ends it.

Party Quirks

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Number of actors: 4-6

Audience participation: While the host character is out of hearing distance, each actor is given some weird personality quirk by the audience they can either be physical (can't sit down on his butt or picks his butt), emotional (hates his butt), or surreal (thinks his butt is his good friend Eric the aardvark).

How it works: Host character starts out by himself. One by one each character rings or knocks and then enters the party; they leave the party when the host guesses the quirk correctly. The scene ends when all quirks have been guessed by the host. Audience encouraged to boo or cheer when the host is close or way off.

Play-book

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Audience gives a non-geographical location. And chooses play-book at of about ten and the page to start from, One actor does the scene straight and the other actor reads every other line from the script.

Pledge break

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Host, two guessers, two presenters; guessers leave the room, for the presenters you get for each of them tree nouns and adjectives (like verbose cat, rancor pencil, and red penguin), guessers come back in, presenters alternate miming the three things (in order) to the guessers, host switches them in fifteen second intervals, go until one team gets all three; fast, high energy game.

P.O.V. (point-of-view)

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Get an historical event from the audience. Three actors do the scene as normal, then re-do it three times from the perspective of the three different characters.