Rewind and Unblock

This is a helpful exercise for teachers wanting to side coach scenes when improvisers aren’t yet used to that, as it gives a context where the helpful nudge from the teacher isn’t unexpected and doesn’t feel like a criticism (which it’s not).

The exercise can then be used to help improvisers to unblock their scene and find agreement and notice offers that have been left behind.

Two people do an improvised scene from suggestion but before it starts the teacher says something along the lines of:

“This is an exercise called rewind. You are going to improvise a scene but every now and then I’ll say rewind to and we’ll rewind to a certain line and explore different ways we could support that line. It will help us find things that have been blocked or missed. There will be quite a few rewinds early on as we work out the game.”

The teacher will then be aiming to help people unblock and discover how many offers there are on stage to support and how much potential in every scene.