Group Scenes and Improv Theater Games
How to Improv
(Angry Panda Troupe - Pan Theater 2011)
At our third and fourth Short Form Improv classes at Pan Theater, we focused a bit more on exploring relationships and status and also escalating emotional commitment to heighten a scene.
We have also been working a bit more on group scenes. The difficult thing about scenes with several people is focusing on one thing at a time, paying attention to what’s going on around you in the scene, and balancing the two.
In a game called Cocktail Party, we had three pairs of people on the stage.
Each pair would be relating to each other while also paying attention to the other duos.
This is because we were learning how to share the scene and be focused on one area while being aware what was going on with the other duos, because we would have to pick up a line from another duo, and use it to continue our own scene.
One game I particularly like involved three people; each person chose, beginning the scene, which other person to focus on.
If two people are focusing on each other, the third person can be quite distracting but the point is to hold your focus for a little while before allowing it to shift.
This is important in a scene because if you don’t know where your focus is, the audience doesn’t know where to focus. I thought this was a very useful exercise.
Finally, there’s a game we played which I believe is called Survivor. It begins with two people and, one by one, three other people enter, each with their own character and action.
This is where you can really see how chaotic a scene can become if everyone talks at once, which happens if the actors get too focused on what they’re doing and forget to pay attention to new people entering the scene, or new situations developing around them.
Once each person’s character and actions have been presented, the director calls “scene” and then asks the audience to “vote off” one player.
The remaining four recreate the entire scene, with someone having to also take on the role of the player that was voted off.
This continues all the way until there is only one player left, and he has to take on the roles of ALL the actors and recreate the scene alone. See why you need to pay attention? !
This is a game that I feel could use a lot of practice, so that your second nature becomes paying attention and knowing when to shift your focus, which is not an easy thing to do with so much going on.
In addition to enjoying these classes very much, I have spent a little time getting to know some of my classmates after class, and learned a couple of interesting things. For example, one of them lives right here in Oakland and takes the bus.
One comes all the way from San Jose for the classes, via public transportation. Another comes from San Francisco via BART, and he told me that he comes to the class at Pan Theater in Oakland because the same type improv class in San Francisco costs a hundred dollars more and they don’t even get to have performances at the end of the class, like we do at Pan!
Hearing all this makes me feel even more fortunate to have our own Pan Theater right here in the East Bay.
Delan McLoren
Short Form Training Troupe Student
Fall 2011