These are short-form games that we tend to play on stage at the end of course show for our Level 2 Performance Course. After Level 2 we have a follow up Level 3 Scenes Course that goes into greater detail about performing longer scenes.
Short-form in improv means short standalone games, usually where a suggestion is taken from the audience at the start of each game to inspire the improvisers on stage.
The origin of a lot of short-form games come from exercises developed by people like Keith Johnstone and Viola Spolin to teach awesome acting skills through play and self-discovery.
Short-form games are loads of fun for actors and audience, and they also have an underlying purpose to them. For instance New Choice is a really fun game that also teaches improvisers to say the first thing that comes to them and to incorporate mistakes. Dubbing (actors off stage provide voices for actors on stage) is a great show game that also teaches deeper listening and giving up control in a scene. If you aren’t sure what the underlying purpose of a game is then please ask us.
Playing short-form games gives people the skills, emotional memory and confidence they will later need for improvising long-form multi-scene stories in later courses.
That’s why Hoopla celebrates both forms.
List of Short-Form Show Games
These are short-form games that we tend to play on stage at the end of course show for our Level 2 Performance Course. After Level 2 we have a follow up Level 3 Scenes Course that goes into greater detail about performing longer scenes.
Our teachers are trained to adapt to each group so the exact line up of games will vary from course to course, and we won’t do all of these in every course. If we’re missing a write up of any games please let us know and we’ll add it on to the list for you.
- Arms
- Bedtime Story
- Complaint Letter
- Déjà Vu
- Dubbing
- Emotional rollercoaster
- Forward Reverse
- Freeze Tag
- Game-o-matic
- Genre Rollercoaster
- Gibberish Award Ceremony
- Household Olympics
- Instruction Manual Die
- Life and Times
- Meanwhile
- Move On
- Movie Director
- New Choice
- Oscar Winning Moment
- Pan Left
- Party Quirks
- Poetry Corner
- Puppets
- Scene Replay
- Scenes from a Hat
- Scenes from Suggestion
- Sound Effects
- Superheroes
- Storyteller Die
- Time Jump
- Typewriter
- Underscore
- Word at a Time Expert
Example Show Running Order
This is an example from a recent show, our teachers adapt the show to suit each group so it will be different each time. You probably wouldn’t play all of these in a show, and we change running order and games to suit each group.