Week 5: You Gotta Have a Gimmick

This week turned out to be my favorite so far. We worked on gimmick games, which are those that have some kind of significant twist or gimmick. These tend to be very popular games during matches, and it was a lot of fun to get to play them during class.

We spent some time discussing the games before we played them, which really helped. With each game, we talked about what makes it funny. It sounds simple, but that’s not something a lot of people really stop and think about…we see a game as funny, and just accept it. Knowing what it is the audience tends to react to gives you something to specifically target during the game. I’ve written about my challenge of overthinking games in the past…these gimmick games almost prohibit me from overthinking because I’m focusing on the gimmick itself.

In some of the games we played, the gimmick was physical…such as “Moving Bodies,” where you play out a scene with someone else controlling all of your movements, and “Arms Expert,” where someone plays an expert answering questions on a certain topic, but you don’t use your own arms…someone else provides them from behind. In other games, the gimmick was verbal…including the very funny “Pick a Play,” where three people act out a scene, but two of them can only read lines of dialogue from the scripts of completely unrelated plays.

I loved this week, and actually feel that these are my strongest games. So, if you happen to have me in your improv fantasy league, use me in these games.

One other note…while it will be seen as some kind of improv blasphemy, I haven’t been a huge fan of the warm-up games we’ve done so far (legions of Bippity Bippity Bop fans will have my head for that). But…this week’s warm-ups were a lot of fun. We did a pattern game that was a great focus exercise, and we did a simple word association game that really helped. Sometimes I have trouble thinking of ideas on how to incorporate a suggestion into a scene…doing a simple word association where you just think of the next word that comes to mind helps.

Give it a try…start with any noun, then think of the next word that comes to mind…then repeat. This morning, I went from paper towels to Ferris wheel in ten steps. I mean…I worked all morning. That’s what I did.