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Short-form improv is built out of games: little structures with rules, so that eight people
making things up at once don't turn into eight people talking over each other. Here are the ones
we play most, how they work, and what we need from you, the audience. If you've watched Whose
Line, you know some of these already. We did not invent any of them. Nobody knows who did. They
get passed around from troupe to troupe like a cold.
Jump to: Freeze Tag · Party Quirks · Questions Only · Scenes From a Hat · Hoedown · Sound Effects · World's Worst · Film & Theater Styles · Helping Hands
| FREEZE TAG |
We need: a starting location or activity.
Two of us start a scene. Everyone else stands at the back. At any moment, somebody at the back yells
"FREEZE!" and the two players stop dead, in whatever pose they're in, mid-lunge, mid-wave, mid-fall.
The person who yelled taps one of them out, steps into the exact same pose, and starts a completely
different scene that makes sense of it. Two people frozen holding hands up high might be a couple on
a roller coaster, then a pair of bank robbers' victims, then two people changing a light bulb in a
very tall room. It's the first game everybody learns and the last one anybody masters.
Theresa says: The trick is to freeze them when they're in a weird position. Freezing two
people standing still is a crime against comedy.
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| PARTY QUIRKS |
We need: three secret quirks, which you give us while the host is out of the room.
One of us is throwing a party. Three guests arrive, one at a time, each with a secret quirk the
audience picked: thinks they're a vending machine, is slowly turning into a cat, believes it's
1850, is allergic to the word "the." The host has to figure out each guest's quirk just by
chatting with them, and say it out loud. Guess right, and that guest leaves. The guests keep
turning their quirks up louder until the host gets it, which is the funniest part.
Theresa says: Stacey's vending machine at auditions made a noise when you pushed her
nose and dropped an imaginary candy bar out of her sleeve. That's when we knew.
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| QUESTIONS ONLY |
We need: a location.
Two of us do a scene where every single line has to be a question. Make a statement, hesitate too
long, or repeat a question, and the audience yells (you're the judges), you're out, and the next
player in line jumps in. It goes fast, it gets very heated, and people end up asking things like
whether the other person is really going to talk to the captain that way. We keep going until
somebody is the last one standing.
Theresa says: Esther has never lost this game. We have tried to make her lose. Our
best theory is that she secretly thinks in questions.
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| SCENES FROM A HAT |
We need: slips of paper, which you fill out at the door before the show.
On the way in, we hand you a slip and you write down a situation: "things you shouldn't say on a
first date," "what your dog is really thinking," "rejected flavors of ice cream," "the worst
possible thing to hear from your pilot." They go in the hat (it's a real hat, a battered fedora
that has been in the troupe since 1995). The host pulls one out and reads it, and whoever has an
idea runs out and does a quick bit. Then the next one. Then the next. Some get one line. Some get
four people. Some get nothing and the host just pulls another, which is also funny.
Theresa says: I'm keeper of the hat. Please write legibly. Please write something we
can do at a campus show.
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| HOEDOWN |
We need: a topic. Something dull is best. Car insurance. The DMV. Parking on campus.
Cesar plays a square dance tune on the keyboard, and the whole line does a little country dance in
a circle. Then each of us in turn steps forward and makes up a verse about the topic on the spot,
four lines, rhyming, in time to the music, and the circle dances again in between. Everybody's
verse has to land on a rhyme at the end. When you can see the rhyme coming and the singer can't,
the whole room holds its breath. The audience usually ends up clapping along.
Theresa says: David is our hoedown star because he can't sing and doesn't care. Confidence
is ninety percent of a hoedown. Rhyming is the other ten and we're still working on it.
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| SOUND EFFECTS |
We need: an adventure. A jungle expedition, a bank heist, a camping trip.
Two of us act out the scene, but we don't make any sounds except talking. Two more of us stand at
microphones at the side and do every single sound effect: doors, footsteps, engines, animals,
explosions, the zipper on the tent. The actors have to go along with whatever sound they get. If
the door makes a noise like a duck, it is now a duck door, and the scene has to deal with it.
Sometimes we hand the sound effects over to someone from the audience, which is risky and great.
Theresa says: Clayton is the best sound effects man in the state of Oklahoma. His
creaky door gets applause on its own. Please don't ask him to do it in the cafeteria.
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| WORLD'S WORST |
We need: jobs, or kinds of people. Lots of them.
The whole troupe lines up. The host calls out a category, like "world's worst lifeguard," "world's
worst kindergarten teacher," "world's worst person to be stuck in an elevator with," and anybody
with an idea steps forward and does one quick line or moment as that person, then steps back. As
many as we can fit, then the next category. It's fast and it's the best warm-up there is.
Theresa says: The secret is that the worst ones are the ones who are trying really hard
and are terrible at it. A tour guide who is very enthusiastic and completely lost beats a mean one
every time.
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| FILM & THEATER STYLES |
We need: an ordinary situation, and then a list of film and theater styles.
Two or three of us start a plain scene, like returning a sweater to a department store. Then the host
starts calling out styles from the audience's list, and we have to keep the same scene going but
switch instantly into the new style: a western, a soap opera, a horror movie, Shakespeare, a kung fu
movie with bad dubbing, a nature documentary, a Broadway musical, an opera. The sweater return
becomes a showdown at high noon, then a tragic betrayal, then a love song to the cashier.
Theresa says: Everyone yells "Shakespeare" and "musical." Please yell something else.
We would love to try film noir. Or a cooking show. Or a nature documentary about the sweater.
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| HELPING HANDS |
We need: something to demonstrate. A cooking show, a makeup tutorial, how to wash a dog.
One of us stands in front with arms behind the back. Another stands right behind and slides their
arms forward under the first one's arms, so the person in front talks and the person behind does
all the hand work, without being able to see. The talker has to explain everything the hands are
doing as if it were on purpose. Hands that scratch your nose, hands that keep adding salt, hands
that wave at your mom in the audience.
Theresa says: We used to use real food for this. Then came the pudding incident of
February. The black box manager has asked us to stick to invisible props, and we respect her
enormously.
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Want to learn? We run a free workshop the Sunday after every show, 2:00 in the black box. No
experience needed. Several of us started there.
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