Where are we?

This is a Game. It is in the following categories:

• Characters

• Exercise

Imitate

How it Works

This is an exercise for characters. 2 players will play a scene in a shop. The quality of the scene is irrelevant here, really; just get into the shop, order what you need, pay for it and off you go. Give us an object (a carrot) and we got a scene in a carrot shop. One player is designated as shopkeeper, and the other will play the customer.

The idea is to give the 'customer' a basis to build a character. She will enter the shop in that character, and the other player (the shopkeeper) tries to imitate the character as closely as possible.

Use the following tricks as stepping stones for building characters:

• Ask 'customer' to talk to you in different voices. Pick one of these and there she goes.
• Ask the 'customer' to pull different kinds of faces. Pick one and there she goes.
• Pick a body part (elbow). There she goes; taking the suggestion 'elbow' as inspiration for her character.
• Pick an emotion and there she goes.
• Ask her to move around a bit, dance and let her freeze. The position in which she is frozen is her inspiration for the customer character.

This is an exercise for both players, but what is exercised is different for both:

• for the customer, the exercise is building a character out of a silly suggestion. Note that there are not good or bad characters; anything in the position/suggestion given to the player can be used as inspiration, even if the 'link' between the suggestion and the actual character is not obvious. The only goal is to come up with interesting, strong characters.
• for the shopkeeper this is a listening/watching exercise. The idea is not for the shopkeeper to build a character based on the suggestion; it is for him to imitate as closely the character treats of the customer.

See also Opposite Characters .

Improv is toilet paper, you use it and throw it away. You don't use it and then frame it; you go to the next roll -- Todd Stashwick