You love this improv thing—you’ve got a practice group, you’re booking indie shows, and you’re waiting for your theater’s house team auditions. So, what should you do in the meantime? Luckily, there is a litany of tools to help your journey as an improviser. We’ve gathered 20 of the best off-the-cuff exercises to help sharpen specific skills and your overall craft—all while having way too much fun along the way.
Crazy Eights
Everyone on the team shakes out their arms and legs (or whichever body parts you choose) one by one, counting down each time from eight with raucous energy. After the last body part, start over again from seven on down. Repeat until you get to “one, one, one, one!”
Simply put, this is a great warmup to increase energy and playfulness—and to remind people that improv is a physical sport. If you want to change this up, replace “crazy” with any other qualifier (such as “lazy eights,” “2000s emo kid eights,” “cowboy eights”) and watch your team create a group game on the spot.
Five Things
Ask a teammate to name five examples of something, either real (“name five basketball players”) or absurd (“name five basketball-playing dinosaurs”). They list them one at a time, while the rest of the room screams the corresponding number in between each example. After the fifth, everyone shouts “These! Are! Five! Things!” and you begin again.
This is a great tool for reminding our brains to think of specifics quickly and to get rid of any sense of momentum-stopping filtration.
Genre Cauldron
The team gathers around an imaginary cauldron, Macbeth-style. Label this cauldron with any genre—something as literal as “film noir” or as absurd as “that cashier you make awkward small talk with.” Every player adds specifics from that genre to the pot as though they’re ingredients in a spell (with fun, witchy noises in between to taste).
It’s a dynamic way to let players build a shared reality and to help their brains notice anything unusual that pops up. To this point, you can modify the exercise to assign one player purposefully ludicrous choices, have everyone except one be nonsensical, or any other reworking you like.
Hot Spot
Have the team make a circle. One brave soul enters the middle and begins singing a real song. The members outside the circle will support that singer with harmonies, handclaps, and everything in between. When something about the song inspires another player, they’ll tag the singer out, jump in, and begin a brand-new song. And so on.
Beyond being wildly entertaining, this game is a great tool to erase any pretensions or “coolness” between teammates and to foster raucous support.
Mind Meld
Two people count to three, then say literally any word that pops into their heads (i.e., “Tractor!” “Leftovers!”). Then, a second pair tries their best to say the same word simultaneously, based on what they think is the most intuitive common term between the last two words. So, “tractor” and “leftovers” might make the next two people say “food” and “farm.” Repeat with new pairs, and when a duo gets that magic, unspoken word at the same time (“Eggs!”), the team celebration will be deservedly wild.
This game is immensely helpful toward building a group mind, as it trains teammates to think not only logically about what fits a pattern, but to consider how their fellow impovers think, too.
It’s Tuesday
Two players begin a scene. One must say the most boring line they can think of—such as, “It’s Tuesday.” The second then treats this with the most emotionally inspired sense of stakes they can. “I know what day of the week it is, Barbara. You think I can’t take care of myself. You’ve always treated me like a child! Well, maybe I should be your little baby, then! Goo-goo ga-ga!”
This style of play is a wonderful way to get teammates into richer scenes quicker, reminding everyone that the power and joy of a scenario is up to them to decide.
Kitty Cat Careers
First, learn the Meow Mix jingle. Then, one player goes to the center of a circle and acts out the tasks of any career using only object work and, yes, meows. The other teammates do their best to guess what career is being performed, adding “kitty cat” before each guess (“Kitty cat golfer! Kitty cat samurai?”). When someone gets it right, everyone sings the jingle and the game begins anew.
You can’t not feel silly playing this game, and building a group silliness is underrated in the art of improv. Plus, it teaches you to watch other players closely, understanding what they’re doing even without words.
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Always-Right Heads Up
Normally, “Heads Up” involves someone placing a card with a noun on their head, while everyone else gives them clues to identify that noun. Since it’s improv, these “cards” are object work, the clues are for a noun invented on the spot, and most importantly, no matter what the person guesses, they are correct and everyone should cheer them on. This game is great for immediate decision-making, clarifying your language when communicating, and reminding everyone there are no mistakes in improvising.
Building a Machine
Everyone except one person in the group uses nonverbal sound and movement to create an abstract, interlocked “machine.” Then, the extra person labels what the machine is, inspiring the players to refine what they’re doing in support of that idea. It’s a good exercise to develop trust, an organic sense of play, and a sharpened sense of understanding patterns in even the strangest places. If your team likes it well enough, it could be formed into a premise-generated opening for a live performance.
Categories
The team gathers around in a circle. One person points at another, saying or doing anything they want (i.e., “Frosted Flakes”). The point-ee then looks to a third person, doing their best to turn that first offer into a pattern (“Cinnamon Toast Crunch”). The third person then points to another, solidifying the pattern (“Apple Jacks”), and on it goes until we reach the first person again. Everyone repeats this pattern.
But then: Another person starts a new category loop—and after that’s established, the team does both simultaneously. Teams can fold as many of these category loops on top of each other as they want, forcing them to listen and label as hard as humanly possible.
Count to 15
Every member of the team closes their eyes. Then, one at a time—without seeing who’s about to speak—they count to the number 15. If multiple people say a number at once, the count restarts. This is a great exercise to focus energy and fine-tune subconscious listening and group mind.
Do What They Say
One person stands up while the rest of the team sits down. The solo performer must do what the group tells them, immediately (“Flip pancakes. The pancakes are too hot! Cool them off with a freeze ray!”). It’s a simple game with wildly entertaining results, reminding people of the radical, simple joys of listening as quickly and aggressively as possible. You can also flip the (nonexistent) script and have one person tell the rest of the team what to do.
One Word at a Time
Just like it sounds, this game involves your team building a story via each player saying one word at a time. “Story” can be a flexible term here: You can tell an actual fairy tale, compose tweets from a certain account, construct an instruction manual—the sky’s the limit!
This type of exercise hones the skill of building something with another person at its most fundamental level. It’s also helpful to figure out when you need to add a major narrative leap in the form of a “key word,” or simply support with a “necessary” word. That discernment is invaluable in scene work.
Pass the Face
Assemble in a circle. One player will turn to another and make some kind of “face”—possibly with exaggerated expressions, nonverbal noises, or dance-like movement. The receiving player then turns and does their best to imitate the exact same face. As this face flows through the group, organic heightening and evolution will come, reminding everyone of the power of simple agreement, physical commitment, and unabashed silliness.
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Repeating Lines
Two participants perform a scene, with one simple adjustment: After receiving a line, repeat it before saying a new one. In this repetition, the player should find a deeper, emotionally driven meaning to the words. At its best, this game will feel Meisner-adjacent. For example:
- Player 1: I believe I deserve a raise.
- Player 2: You believe you deserve a raise. Your beliefs don’t matter here at Ford, son. I make the decisions.
- Player 1: My beliefs don’t matter here at Ford. You make the decisions. I am a worthless worm in your machine, sire, and I demand you punish me.
Ain’t that more interesting than a standard “performance review” scene?
Shared Character Monologue
One player steps into the center and begins an improvised monologue. At any point, their teammates can tag them out and pick up the monologue exactly where they left off (if it’s in the middle of a word, they should literally finish that word before continuing). This is a great way to practice group mind, listening, and the responsibility of building on the same elements of a scene.
Slam Poetry
For the group struggling to get out of their head, this exercise will be a salve. Basically, one person begins an improvised version of slam poetry, emphasizing stream of consciousness, abrupt bursts of emotion, opinions about everything, and any other trope you might associate with the art form. Then the next player picks up where the last one left off, and so on. This exercise will light up the imagination in your group and show them that the secret sauce was in them the entire time.
Three-Line Scenes
For the group that needs to get a little more in touch with their head: Two players perform a scene with only three lines. The first line will demonstrate an unusual behavior; the second will label that behavior; and the third will justify that behavior. For example:
- Player 1: Hey, boss, just wanted to let you know I’ve replaced all our boring office spreadsheets with fun pictures of cupcakes.
- Player 2: You deleted all of our spreadsheets—why would you do something so childish?
- Player 1: I act like this because I’ve never healed my inner child, and I’ll do anything to fix that.
And that’s that; next two up! Three-line scenes are a great reminder of what’s necessary to establish at the top of a scenario, while training players to make efficient moves at the top of their intelligence.
Unqualified Class
Step 1: Ask an improviser about a skill they are confident in that isn’t improv. Then, have the improviser next to them teach a class on that skill. For the teacher, this is a great tool for jumping into a new reality with as little preparation as possible while maintaining commitment, authority, and top-of-intelligence play. For the classmates, especially the one watching their skill get butchered, it’s a great exercise in agreement, yielding status as needed, and letting go of any preconceptions.
What Are You Doing?
One player performs a silent act of object work (such as, preparing a sandwich), making it clear what they’re doing. The next participant steps forward and asks, “Hey, [Player Name], what are you doing?” The first player responds with an action that is not what they’re currently doing; for example, the sandwich preparer says, “I’m taming a shark.” The recipient then silently acts out that action—repeat until the whole team has gone!
Object work is a great way to establish a base reality, especially when the action is objectively silly. This exercise hones in on that skill. It also trains players to say yes to an idea as quickly as possible and put it in their body, before putting it into their pesky brains.