Thursday, July 2, 2015

Play Party Eccentricities In Improv

Party Quirks is a great improv game for four players, and gives the audience someone to root for, which is always nice. They also get to feel superior to a player because they have hidden information.


Instructions


1. Choose a member of the troupe to be the host of the party. Send him away into a soundproof booth, which often consists of going into another room and putting on headphones, or at least covering his ears and singing.


2. Now that the host cannot hear, take suggestions from the audience for quirks that the other three players can have. Quirks can be pretty much anything the audience comes up with, ranging from, "She's afraid of Jello" to "He's the Pope." Each player should be assigned a unique quirk.


3. The MC should go and fetch the host from his soundproof area and return him to the stage. The host begins setting up a party, and the other three players line up behind an imagined door. After 10 or 15 seconds of party setup, the first guest should approach the door and make her presence known. The host should open the door to admit the guest and then the guest enters the scene.


4. The guest at the party should display her quirk while acting in the party scene, although whether she is blatant or starts by doing so in a subtle manner is completely up to her. The host, meanwhile, is acting in the scene while trying to determine the quirk each player has been assigned.


5. When he figures it out, he should announce the guest's quirk, and the audience then generally claps as the guest leaves the stage. When a guest has been guessed, the next guest should arrive immediately. However, other players do not have to wait for a correct guess; having multiple guests in the party at once is often helpful to a scene.


6. When the final guest has their quirk correctly guessed, the game is over.