Improv Wants and Tactics
Each player secretly picks a want from their scene partner — money, an apology, a kiss, permission to leave — and pursues it through the scene, changing tactic when one stops working: charm, then guilt, then threat, then flattery. Afterwards, debrief whether the audience could read each want and how the tactics shifted. It trains objective and tactic — the actor's engine that gives a scene drive and stakes. Players learn that a scene is two people wanting things, that a want played through changing tactics never goes flat, and that pursuing an objective is far more compelling than being clever. It's the direct cure for pleasant, aimless scenes where nobody wants anything.
🎓 Tips
Pick a want you can actively pursue. "To be happy" is unplayable — coach concrete wants aimed at the partner, like "to get them to confess". Change tactic when one fails, don't change the want. The variety of approach is the skill — charm, guilt, threat — while the objective stays fixed. Debrief on what read. If the audience couldn't see the want, it was too internal — teach playing the pursuit through action, not thought.
Spotted a mistake, a missing variant, a better way to run it? Change it.