Improv Character improv games
A character is not an accent. It's a way of wanting something, and a body that wants it. These games build one fast — from a walk, from a status, from a single obsession — and then keep it alive when the scene stops being about it.
Animal Work
Choose an animal and become it entirely: the rhythm, the breath, the centre of gravity, the way of looking. Then humanise it in stages — 75%, 50%, 25% — until only a person is left, with something animal inside.
Ask the Expert
An expert takes audience questions on a topic they know nothing about (suggested by the audience). Confidence is everything — the expert is never wrong.
Character Walks
Walk the space leading with your nose, then chest, pelvis, knees. Let each walk generate a voice, an age, an opinion. Meet others and small-talk in character.
Dub the Muted TV
Mute a drama or a talk show and dub every character out loud, live. You choose neither the entrances, nor the silences, nor the looks: you have to justify whatever happens, exactly as on stage. Fifteen minutes, never stopping to think.
Gift Giving
Pairs exchange imaginary gifts. The receiver defines what it is upon opening ('A puppy! You remembered!') and the giver justifies. Endowment plus space-object work in one.
Given Circumstances
Before playing, the partners silently settle four things: who I am to you, where we are, what has just happened, what I want now. Then the scene is played — and none of the four is ever spoken aloud. The audience must read them off the behaviour.
Good, Bad, Worst Advice
A panel of three gives advice on audience problems: one gives good advice, one bad advice, one terrible advice. Simple frame, huge character room.
Hot Seat Interview
One player sits in the hot seat in character; the group interviews them. The character discovers opinions, history and voice live. Excellent before longform character work.
Interview Your Character
Invent a character in one sentence, then interview them for fifteen minutes — questions out loud, answers out loud: what do they eat in the morning? who do they lie to? what are they ashamed of? what have they lost? Write down the three answers that surprised you.
La Ronde
A chain of two-handers: scene 1 puts A with B, scene 2 takes B with C, scene 3 C with D, and so on until it comes back to the first player, closing the round. Every character is therefore seen twice, with two different partners — and that is the whole flavour: you discover that a man who is charming with his wife is a tyrant with his employee.
Laban Efforts
Eight movement qualities to travel through: punch, float, press, glide, flick, slide, wring, dab. Each player explores walking, then an everyday gesture (pouring a glass) in each quality. Then improvise a short scene, keeping YOUR quality.
Party Quirks
A host prepares a party; three guests arrive with secret quirks or identities suggested by the audience. The host must guess who or what they are. Endorse big character choices.
Play the Verb
Each player is secretly given a transitive verb to play on their partner: to seduce, to punish, to reassure, to humiliate, to rescue. You don't play an emotion, you DO something to someone. If the verb isn't working, change it mid-scene — as people do in life.
Record, Then Listen
Record two minutes of monologue in character — any pretext will do: a complaint, a wedding speech, a confession. Then listen back. The second half is the exercise: catch the tics, the sentences that curl up at the end, the irony you hide behind, the moments where you comment instead of playing.
Status Party
Everyone gets a playing card defining their social status (ace low, king high) and mingles at a party playing it. Then: wear it on your forehead so only others see it. Discuss how status physically feels.
Status Walk
Out in the street, one afternoon: walk twenty minutes in high status (steady gaze, slow gestures, few words), then twenty minutes in low status (darting eyes, small gestures, apologies). Play nothing — change only those three settings, and watch what people give back.
Superheroes
A crisis is announced. Hero #1 gets a ridiculous superhero name from the audience and names each arriving colleague ('Thank goodness you're here, Captain Whisper!'). Each must embody their name.
The Moment Before
Before entering, each player decides in silence what happened to them ten seconds ago — not yesterday, ten seconds. They've just been fired, they've just read a message, they've been running. You come in WITH that, and play an ordinary scene.
Three Faces in the Mirror
In front of a mirror: pick three people you crossed paths with today — the cashier, the man on the bus, your boss. Take each one's body for sixty seconds: the back, the rhythm, the gaze, the mouth at rest. Don't hunt the caricature, hunt the exact posture. Move from one to the next without stopping.