Ye Joye of Improv

Remembering what got us into Improv in the first place

Laughter. Summer Laughter by Ben Mizen on Flickr.

Games are fun

Sometimes, people get stressed out and forget why they do things.

We’d had a bad show, and the next show was another week away. There was a little bit lack of confidence. Plus, a massive show (#shamelessplug #pleasebuytickets) loomed in the distance. Also: #ManilaImprovFest (hello!). People were stressed out before and after.

So I said screw it, let’s play some games.

I got into Improv for the laughter and validation, sure. On my very first show I made a joke that had the room laughing and they haven’t been able to keep me off the stage since. But where I really got into it were the games.

I am a Game Developer, and my platform happens to be Improv. The engine is fantastic, runs off pure imagination and a smidge of random trivia knowledge. It’s infinitely replayable, sometimes with limited graphics (and occasional crashing). But the User-Generated Content is just infinitely entertaining.

What I discovered, early on, are that people love playing games. They’re fun! And they’ll often get into the spirit of the games so much that they forget who they are. You can tweak the rules of the game so they’re forced to play a character incredibly unlike them, and then suddenly you have a very stern, strict Austrian lady who rolled around on the ground having a tantrum, or a reticent player suddenly spitting fire and throwing shade, or people pulling out unexpected parts of their personality.

We laughed a lot yesterday, mostly because the Latecomers are adept at giving shit to each other and because they love to play Sausages (how is this my most appreciated game!?).

But once in a while it’s fun to play games and laugh, and remember why we got into Improv.

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Morgan Schneiderlin

Two or more players; non-performance; best played.

Recipe:

1. Start a scene. Announce that every noun in the scene is to be replaced by the word ‘Schneiderlin’. So, instead of saying that every noun in the scene is to be replaced, you would say that every Schneiderlin in the Schneiderlin is to be replaced.
2. Continue for a bit, then announce that every descriptive word, modifier, adjective or adverb is to be replaced by Morgan. ‘Today is a sunny day’ becomes ‘Schneiderlin is a Morgan Schneiderlin’. Try to imagine having a Schneiderlin where the Morgan Schneiderlin are replaced by the Schneiderlin Schneiderlin.
3. The scene descends into Morgan Schneiderlin.

Notes:

1. Don’t get too worked up about tenses or grammar, and do not allow for modifications of Morgan Schneiderlin. One of the delights of the game is seeing how many times people say ‘Morgan Schneiderlin’ in a row.
2. Why him? I think he has a slightly silly name that is difficult to say. There is also a companion game, Bastian Schweinsteiger, which follows the pattern (verb) (any modifier). So the rules of the game would instead read: Bastian a Schneiderlin, and then Bastian that Morgan Schneiderlin in the Schneiderlin is to be Bastian by the Schneiderlin Schneiderlin.
3. After the initial giggling and silliness of saying the name of the French footballer several times, you begin to see people playing the scene with much better fundamentals; body language, facial expressions, tonality and gestures. It’s even possible to figure out what the scene is about — and yes, it’s possible to get away with sentences that don’t make sense and just involve a lot of Morgan Schneiderlins.

Variations: Guessing game (relationships); as a tool to improve nonverbal communication.