Moving out of warm ups and into Opening and Exercises, here is a warm up/exercise that is typically used as an Opening for Long Form Improv.Â
Pattern Game- (Premise Building, Listening, & Support)- Pattern game can be used as a warm up or intro into scenes/long form (Typically used for The Harold). Players get into a crescent horseshoe open circle and start to A -C a word based on a suggestion, then premise build an idea for a scene off of a few words, and then riff a line of dialogue or two that might be in said scene. One good way to put training wheels on the game is to run the Pattern Game with stations, and then let the players loose where anyone can A-C, Premise Build, and Riff at any time. After a full premise is created and riffed on, start to word associate (A-C) again based on something from that idea, until a new premise is created and riffed on. After 2-3 premises are created we want to organically word associate back to whatever the suggested word at the beginning was. Once we are back to the suggestion word we once again build off from it creating 2-3 scene ideas and returning to the suggested word again, and then one final time after that. So in a Pattern Game we have 3 loops of word association, premise building, and riffing.
With stations 2-3 players A-C an idea, 2-3 Players Premise Build, and 1-2 players riff lines of dialogue.
Important things to focus on while doing the Pattern Game is to not just start saying a list of words without going A-C and/or without emotion. Two ways a list of words happens is when players have no emotional reaction to the words they hear and no emotional attachment to the words they say or players start to A-B words rather than A-C them. If a group of players has this problem, sometimes it is good to slow everyone down, instruct them to have a reaction rather than just say words, or go back to the basic where to A-C we say (A) makes me think of (B) and (B) makes me think of (C).
For premise building it is important that we don’t just mash words together or just say words to say words. Premise building should be ideas that we want to play, sometime it is helpful to treat the premise building like a sketch pitch meeting. Another important thing is that we support ideas built in premise rather than changing them. If the premise is “Batman as an exotic dancer” we DO NOT want to change the idea and say “Aquaman as an exotic dancer” or “Batman as an accountant” it is better to support the original idea.
Finally riffing should be no more than 1-2 lines of dialogue, if it become more we start to talk out the scene, which will not leave much to play in the scenes. For example we might say based on the batman idea “I’ll take off everything other than my bat mask and utility belt” and one more line, but not the entire scene.
If used for a warm up, discuss how some of the scene ideas might have been played out and if used for a Long Form piece use the premises to inspire scenes.
