Improv Improv games for large groups
A class of eighteen is not a class of six with more people: waiting kills it. These games keep everyone on their feet, either because the whole group plays at once or because the turns come fast. They're what you reach for in a workshop, a school hall, or a first session where nobody knows anyone.
A to C Thinking
Given a word (A), don't voice your first, obvious association (B) — voice the association of that association (C). "Beach" → your first thought is "sand" (B) → skip it → say "sunburnt tourists" (C). Go around a circle at pace, always jumping to the second link. It trains originality by breaking the reflex toward the obvious, shared answer. Because everyone's B is roughly the same, always reaching for C pulls players toward fresher, more personal, more surprising choices — without abandoning logic, since C still connects. It's a targeted cure for predictable, on-the-nose improv, and it sharpens the instinct to find the choice nobody saw coming but everyone believes.
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.
Armando
A monologist — often a guest — tells a true, personal story sparked by the audience suggestion. The team then improvises scenes inspired by the story's themes and feelings, not by re-enacting its events. After a few scenes, the monologist speaks again, and the pattern repeats. Honesty in, invention out. It teaches the hardest listening in improv: pulling the emotional essence from a real story rather than its plot. Players learn to mine a monologue for a theme — regret, pride, a small humiliation — and build something new around it. It's a masterclass in inspiration over imitation, and it rewards genuine, un-jokey storytelling.
Big Booty
Everyone stands in a circle. A player gets designated as Big Booty. From him, each player gets a number, going clockwise from Big Booty (Player on his left is number 1) Before starting the game, everyone to call his number one by one, saying Number XX, one after another: - First player on the left of big booty says 'Number one' - The player on his left says 'Number two' And so on, and so on.. The objective of the game is to call each other, starting by saying your number, followed by the number of the person you are calling out Starting the game, everyone says in rhythm: "Big booty big booty big booty, oh yeah" Big booty starts and says his name and calls someone: Big booty - "Big Booty, Number 2" Player Number 2 - "Number 2, Number 7" Player Number 7 - "Number 7, Number 1" Player Number 1 - "Number 1, Big booty" (yes you can go back to Big booty) .. And so on and so on. But IF anyone screws it up, breaks the overall rhythm, everyone says "Oooooh shit", the player moves to the right of Big Booty, and becomes the last number of the group. Consequently, everyone who was on the left of the losing player now has a new number - (Always starting from 1 on the left of Big booty) When anyone has failed and moved to the last number, start again, 'Big booty big booty big booty, oh yeah'
Categories (Rubbing the goggle)
People stand in circle. A category is called out — breakfast cereals, French rivers, reasons to be late, colors, things you can say about you car but not your wife, etc. It can be anything Going around the circle on a steady beat, each player names one item that fits. Hesitate, repeat something already said, or break the rhythm, and the category resets to a new one: The circle reduces, everyone comes to the centre and says 'rubbing the google, rubbing the goggle, rubbing the goggle' (mime rubbing a globe with your hands) until anyone with a category idea says it, people go back in circle, and so on..
Character Walks
Players walk the space, leading with one body part at a time — the nose, then the chest, the pelvis, the knees. Each lead changes the whole body, and from that changed body a voice, an age, an attitude and an opinion are allowed to emerge. Then they meet others and make small talk fully in character. It teaches that character starts in the body, not the head. Rather than inventing a personality and bolting it on, players discover one from a physical impulse — which produces truer, fuller, more surprising characters than "I'll be a grumpy pirate". It builds a reliable physical toolkit for finding people fast on stage.
Crazy Eights
Everyone shakes out their right arm eight times counting aloud, then the left arm eight, right leg eight, left leg eight. Then four of each, then two, then one — the count speeding up as it shrinks — and it ends on a single shake and a group cheer. Ninety seconds, no thinking, whole body awake. It's the fastest way to move a group from sitting-and-tired to standing-and-ready, and the shared countdown and final shout knit everyone into one energy before the session proper begins.
Deconstruction
A long, grounded two-person opening scene is played first — often ten minutes of real relationship. Then the team deconstructs it: subsequent scenes explode its themes, replay moments as flashbacks, chase tangents, voice the characters' inner monologues, and follow minor references down rabbit holes. The first scene is the seed — everything after is its analysis dramatised. It's an analytical, advanced form that teaches deep listening and thematic mining. Players must watch the opening scene like hawks, identify what it was really about, and then build outward with intelligence rather than randomness. It rewards patience and subtlety, and it shows a group how much material a single honest scene actually contains.
Emotional Symphony
A conductor assigns each player an emotion expressed as a sound and movement — sobbing grief, giddy joy, seething rage. Then they conduct the group like an orchestra: raising and lowering the volume, cueing solos, swelling everyone at once, cutting to silence. The room becomes a living instrument of feeling. It's pure permission to be big, loud and emotional with zero pressure to be clever or make sense. Shy players discover their volume, everyone practises committing to a single strong emotion on cue, and the group tunes into a conductor's shared control. It's a joyful warm-up that dissolves inhibition and reminds a room that emotion, fully expressed, is already compelling.
Enemy & Defender
Each player silently picks two others: an "enemy" and a "defender", telling no one. On go, everyone moves at once, trying to keep their defender positioned between themselves and their enemy at all times. Since everyone's targets are secret and different, the room churns into constant, purposeful motion — then freeze and reveal the hidden web. Hidden pattern, visible chaos. It fills the space, raises the heart rate, and shakes off the outside day in a couple of minutes — while quietly training players to hold an intention while everything around them keeps changing.
Environment Build
One player enters an empty stage and uses a single object with full detail — a specific mug on a specific shelf. Each new player adds another object, respecting everything already placed, until a whole space exists in the air. Then the group plays a short scene inside it, honouring every established object. It builds space-object work and shared spatial memory — the invisible set that most improvisers neglect. Players learn to make objects real and consistent, to remember where the door and the sink are, and to let the environment feed the scene. A group that can build and hold a space together looks instantly more skilled and grounded.
Follow the Follower
Start in a circle mirroring one visible leader's slow movements. Then the leadership passes silently from person to person — no one announces it. Finally, nobody leads at all: everyone mirrors everyone, and the group moves as a single organism, changes rippling out with no source. It is the deepest group-mind builder there is. Players stop asking "whose turn is it" and start feeling the collective impulse — the same sense that lets an ensemble share focus and shift a scene together without a word.
Freeze Tag
Two players improvise a scene with big, clear physicality — reaching, leaning, grabbing. At any moment anyone in the group shouts "Freeze!", taps one player out, and takes over their exact frozen position. From that same pose, they launch a completely new scene, justified by the bodies. It keeps rotating, fast. It is the classic shortform opener because it teaches two core reflexes at once: reading a physical picture and committing to a fresh idea instantly. The pose is the offer — the game rewards players who make bold shapes and jump in without a plan.
Gibberish Circle
A player sends a short gibberish phrase — nonsense sounds, full of intention — around the circle. Each person repeats what they think they heard and transforms it a little as they pass it on, like a spoken game of telephone. Then split into pairs for short gibberish conversations, complete with emotion and meaning. Stripping away real words forces everything else to carry the scene: tone, face, body, rhythm. Players who hide behind clever dialogue discover how much they can express — and how much they can understand — with no vocabulary at all.
Give and Take Focus
The group moves around the space with one rule: only one person may move (or speak) at a time. To move, you must take focus boldly — to let someone else move, you give it generously. The focus passes around the room like a ball nobody can hold too long, and the group practises seeing it and sharing it. It's a pure stagecraft and awareness drill. Players learn to feel where an audience's attention is, to take it with commitment when it's their moment, and to yield it without sulking when it isn't — the invisible traffic control that keeps a group scene from becoming a pile-up. Applied to a real scene afterwards, it instantly cleans up messy, everyone-talking chaos.
Group Counting (21)
The group counts to twenty-one, one number per person, in no fixed order and with no signals — no nods, no glances, no going round the circle. If two people say a number at the same time, the whole group starts again from one. Eyes down or closed makes it harder and purer. There is no trick, only attention. It trains a group to sense each other without looking — the shared awareness that lets a team edit a scene, start together, and end together. It's quiet, humbling, and unites a room fast.
Hot Spot
One player jumps into the centre and starts singing any song — made up or known — while the group backs them loudly. The instant they run dry, someone else tags in with a completely new song, and the first player melts back into the supporting circle. It never leaves a gap. It looks like a singing game but it's really a trust game. The lesson is to jump in before you're ready, and to sing loud so your teammate can escape. Nobody drowns because the group won't let them.
Improvised Documentary
A mockumentary. Talking-head interviews — characters speaking straight to camera — alternate with 'footage' scenes about a community event the audience names: the village pumpkin festival, a struggling amateur orchestra, a competitive dog show. The interviews reveal character and back-story, the scenes show the event unfolding, and the two forms feed each other. It's a gift for character players and a lesson in structure through contrast. The direct-address interview teaches strong, opinionated characters, while the scenes demand real interaction — and the comedy blooms in the gap between how people describe themselves and how they actually behave. Endlessly rich, and very kind to a big cast.
Improvised Movie
The audience gives a genre and a title, and the team performs the whole film — complete with a director's voice calling cuts, camera angles, slow-motion, montages, flashbacks and reshoots. The cinematic vocabulary is part of the fun: a player can freeze for a close-up, the director can rewind a bad take, and scenes can jump anywhere in time and space. It teaches genre discipline and the power of framing. Because a director controls the edits, players learn to serve a bigger shape and to make bold, filmic choices — the sweeping entrance, the dramatic reveal. It's a spectacular showcase that rewards a group who commit to their genre and trust the director's eye.
Invocation (Opening)
A ritual opening. The players 'invoke' the suggestion as an object of worship, building in intensity: 'It is…', 'You are…', 'Thou art…', moving from plain literal description up through metaphor to mythic, poetic exaltation. Voices overlap and answer each other, and the word is turned over, praised and mythologised until its themes glow. It's a high-commitment, high-poetry opening that mines a suggestion for deep associations rather than jokes. It teaches escalation, group listening and the courage to be earnest and lyrical on stage. Because it climbs from the literal to the mythic, it surfaces themes a jokier opening would skip — perfect fuel for a rich, resonant show.
Kitty Wants a Corner
Players stand in spots around the space with one "kitty" in the middle. The kitty approaches someone and says "Kitty wants a corner" — that player replies "Ask my neighbour" and points them on — while, behind the kitty's back, everyone else is quietly swapping spots with each other. The kitty pounces on any spot left empty, and whoever's stranded becomes the new kitty. Pure playground energy, and sneakily useful: it trains peripheral awareness and silent group coordination. Players have to plan swaps with their eyes while keeping a straight face at the kitty — split attention, wrapped in fun.
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.
Melody Mirror
In a circle, one player sings a short melodic phrase on a single syllable — the group repeats it exactly. The next player offers another. No words, no meaning to find: only a melody to hear and give back.
Name Six
A ball or beanbag is passed around the circle while one player in the middle is given a category and must name six things in it — six vegetables, six film stars — before the ball completes its lap back to where it started. Beat the ball and you escape — get caught mid-list and you keep going or swap in. The ticking lap turns knowing into performing. It trains fast recall under real, visible pressure, and the whole circle roots for the person in the middle — so it builds group warmth as much as it builds quick thinking.
Pass the Clap
In a circle, you pass a single clap by clapping in unison with the person beside you — you both hit it at the exact same instant, then they turn to their other neighbour and pass it on. The clap travels around the ring, and the whole game is landing that shared beat together. Level 2: Players have the possibility to 'double the clap', instead of turning to the next improviser, player can clap again, and the direction changes.
Pattern Game (Opening)
A word-association opening for a Harold or montage. The group starts from the suggestion and riffs in waves — a word, an image, an opinion, a short heightened run — finding the themes, viewpoints and games that will fuel the scenes to come. It's not a scene and not a story: it's a collective brainstorm performed out loud, mined for material. Taught on its own, it's the single most useful longform skill. Players learn to free-associate without judging, to spot when a run is heating up and heighten it, and to leave the opening carrying a handful of clear themes rather than a blank mind. A strong pattern game makes the whole show that follows possible.
Questions Only
Players may speak only in questions. Make a statement, hesitate too long, repeat a question, or ask a non-sequitur, and you're buzzed out and replaced by the next player. The aim is not a tennis rally of nonsense but a real scene that happens to be built entirely of questions. Under the rule sits a genuine skill: questions that advance a scene rather than stall it. "Why are you holding my father's watch?" carries story — "How are you?" doesn't. It trains players to ask with intention and status, which sharpens their offers even in ordinary scenes.
Samurai
Players stand in a circle as sword-wielding warriors. One raises the sword overhead with a loud "HA!", then "strikes" toward another player with a second "HA!". That target raises their sword with a "HA!", and the two players on either side of them slash at their belly with a "HA!". The target then strikes someone new. Miss your cue, hesitate, or stay quiet, and you're out. It demands the three things beginners hold back: big voice, big body, and instant reaction. It's loud on purpose — it burns off nerves and gets a timid group committing fully within minutes.
Scenes From a Hat
The audience's written suggestions go into a hat — "bad things to say at a funeral", "rejected superhero powers". The host draws one, reads it, and players step out in ones and twos to fire off the quickest possible take, then step back. Drop a dud, move on instantly. It's rapid-fire and disposable by design. It's the best low-stakes opener there is: no scene to sustain, no story to protect, just one idea hit hard and abandoned. It teaches players to commit to a single beat and then let it go — and it's a reliable crowd-warmer that hides individual misses inside the pace.
Slide Show
One player narrates the slide show of their holiday, expedition or disastrous wedding, clicking through invisible photos. On each "click", the other players instantly freeze into the tableau of that slide, and the narrator justifies whatever pose they see — no matter how strange. Rotate the narrator between rounds. It's a justification and teamwork gem. The frozen players make a bold, blind offer with their bodies, and the narrator's job is to say "yes" to it and fold it into the story. It teaches players to make and accept surprising physical gifts, and to build meaning after the image, not before.
Sound and Movement Pass
In a circle, one player crosses toward another with a repeated sound-and-movement — a gesture and a noise fused together. The receiver takes it on exactly, mirrors it back for a moment, then gradually transforms it into a new sound-and-movement of their own and carries that across to someone else. The impulse travels and mutates around the circle. It frees the body and voice together and trains committed transformation. Players learn to fully receive an offer before changing it, and to let a new impulse grow out of the old rather than being manufactured from the head. It's a superb loosener that kills self-consciousness and builds the accept-then-transform reflex at the heart of "yes, and".
Sound Ball
Throw an imaginary ball across the circle. As you throw, you make a sound — the catcher receives that exact sound with their body, then invents a new sound as they throw it on. The ball is never silent and never dropped. It does two jobs at once: it wakes up the voice and it trains real give-and-take. Catching the sound fully — matching its size and weight — is a listening exercise in disguise, and it primes the vocal freedom that scenes need.
Status Party
Everyone draws a playing card that sets their social status (ace low, king high) and mingles at a party playing it — without ever naming a number. Then the twist: hold the card to your forehead so you can see everyone's status but not your own, and treat each other accordingly until you can guess where you sit. It's the clearest status drill there is. Players learn that status is played, not stated — through eye contact, space, interruption, how you offer a drink — and that it's relative, shifting with whoever you meet. Status is the hidden engine of most scenes, and feeling it in the body here makes it usable everywhere.
The Bat
A Harold — or any longform — performed in complete darkness, or with the audience's eyes closed. Pure audio improv: voices, footsteps, sound effects made by mouth and body, and silence used as a tool. With no visuals, the entire world is built in the ear, and the imagination of the listener does the set design. Stripping sight forces everything into the voice and into clarity. Players must label who and where they are, vary their vocal characters so the audience can tell them apart, and treat silence and sound as deliberate choices. It's an advanced, atmospheric form that sharpens vocal range and verbal economy like nothing else — astonishingly intimate when it works.
The Harold
The founding longform, built by Del Close. One audience suggestion feeds a group opening, then three unrelated scenes (1A, 1B, 1C). A group game follows, then the second beats of each scene, another group game, and finally the third beats — where the separate threads, themes and characters collide and connect. Thirty minutes, roughly nine scenes, one shape. You don't learn the Harold by performing it — you learn it by drilling what it demands: fast openings, clean two-person scenes, thematic listening, and callbacks with consequences. The form is a container, not a trick. What fills it is a group that hears the same themes and trusts them.
The Improvised Musical
A full sung show: one suggestion, one story, and five to seven musical numbers — an opening that builds the world, the main character's want song, a duet, a reversal, a finale everyone joins. The story carries the songs, never the other way round: without a clear want, no chorus will save the scene.
The Writer
An author sits at a desk and narrates a story aloud — "She opened the door, not knowing what waited inside" — while other players act out every word. The players can seize narrative control back through their choices and dialogue, and the author edits, skips ahead, rewinds and heightens. The two forces push and pull the story between them. It's a showcase for narrative players and a lesson in shared authorship. The author frames and the actors fill, each yielding to the other at the right moment. It teaches the give-and-take between narration and scene — the exact muscle that powers many long-form and storytelling shows.
Walk Stop Jump Clap
Players walk the space and obey four commands: walk, stop, jump, clap. Once the group has it, invert the meanings — now "walk" means stop and "stop" means walk, "jump" means clap and "clap" means jump. Add and swap pairs until brains are pleasantly scrambled. It's a focus reset and a listening drill in one. The forced re-mapping snaps players out of autopilot and into present-moment attention — the exact state a scene needs. It also fills the space and gets bodies moving without any pressure to perform.
Whoosh Bang Pow
An energy circle with three commands. "Whoosh" passes the energy to your neighbour. "Bang" blocks it and sends it back the other way. "Pow" throws it across the circle to anyone. The group keeps the energy alive and moving, reacting instantly to whatever comes at them. It's Zip Zap Zop with choices: now players have to decide, fast, and stay ready to receive from any direction. A superb wake-up that sharpens reaction and keeps everyone in the game.
Word Association Circle
Around the circle, each player instantly says the first word the previous word triggers. "Ocean" — "blue" — "sky" — "bird". No judging, no planning, no cleverness. Just the honest next thought, out loud, on the beat. It trains the single most important reflex in improv: saying the first thing without editing it. Players who learn to trust their instinct here stop censoring themselves in scenes — which is where all the freezing and over-thinking comes from.
World's Worst
The group forms a loose line. A category is called — the world's worst surgeon, babysitter, wedding toast. One at a time, players step forward, deliver the single worst possible version of it in a line or a beat, and step back. Quick hits, no scenes, endless rotation. It's the ultimate pace-changer and idea-generator. There's no story to protect, so players practise pure joke instinct and the discipline of stepping out only when they've got one and clearing fast when they haven't. It also surfaces a group's comic voices quickly — useful early in a workshop.
Yes And Circle
In pairs or a circle, build a shared plan one line at a time, each sentence beginning with "Yes, and…": "Let's throw a party." "Yes, and we'll invite the whole street." "Yes, and we'll hire a brass band." Then run the same plan again with "Yes, but…" and feel it wither. The contrast is the lesson. It's the most direct drill of the core improv reflex: accept the offer, then add to it. Players feel in their body how "and" builds momentum and "but" strangles it — and they carry that felt difference into every scene, where blocking is almost always a quiet "yes, but" in disguise.
Yes Let's!
Anyone shouts an idea — "Let's all paint a fence!" The whole group roars "YES, LET'S!" and does it, fully, together, until someone offers a new activity — "Let's all be seagulls!" — and everyone commits to that. No idea is refused, ever. It is the purest "yes, and" drill in existence, stripped down to its core: accept every offer, and throw your whole body behind it. Players feel, physically, how good it is to be agreed with — and carry that generosity straight into their scenes.
Zip Zap Zop
Stand in a circle. A player sends energy to someone with a sharp clap-and-point and "Zip". That person passes it on with "Zap", the next with "Zop", then back to "Zip" — always in that order. The energy flies around the ring, faster and faster. It's the first warm-up for a reason: it asks for nothing but eye contact, a clear gesture, and the nerve to commit out loud. Nobody has to be funny — they just have to be present and awake.