"Let's do it!"
Let's do it...
Variation: "Like This"
Like let's do it, swapping ideas for activities, only in this case the activity is always the first time for the partner so the initiator has to explain/show how to do it -- "like this..."
The Gift
Learned this at Kani Club.
In pairs, one person (The Giver) mimes giving the other a gift. Her mime should show some quality of the gift -- size, weight, temperature, value, etc.
The Receiver receives the gift in kind (showing its weight, etc) and identifies it. E.g., "Oh what a beautiful lobster! Thank you so much!"
The Giver, in the spirit of "Yes, and...", follows the Receiver's lead, adding some detail about the Gift. E.g., "I pulled it up in the trap this morning and thought of you."
The Interpreter
I got this from Kani Club.
Three players and an audience (optional).
The scene is an alien visitor being interviewed by someone who does not speak her/his/its? language. So there is an interpreter.
Choose the setting: a TV program, an immigration interview, a job interview, a political meeting, the UN...
Role play an interview with the alien speaking gibberish which the interpreter translates into English. When the interviewer speaks, the interpreter translates into gibberish.
Variation:
I heard you fired your boss...
This game is a variation on the "Yes, and yay" improvisation game I learned at Kani Club. The purpose is to be playful and free with language, using a standard form of interaction creatively. Like most games, it can be thematic or simply fanciful. (In any case, it needs to be fanciful.) Finding the creativity and play in each other is an important gain for people working together in groups. Just as we need to re-invent the wheel periodically when it comes to our strategy, we also need to re-discover each other from time to time.
The flow:
Um, what is that? (aka alien communication)
(I learned this at Kani Club, the great "Yes, and..." improv group in Tokyo.)
This game, done in pairs, challenges the listener and the speaker alike to clarify the meaning of words and phrases used. Like all games it is, as Huizinga says, "pointless but significant." The fun is in the pointless interruption and unnecessary explanation. The significance is in the verification of mutual understanding of even the simplest terms.
The flow:
List of games from Kani Club
- Me-You
- Rhythm shiritori
- Don't get left behind (ひとりにならない）
- Word Association
- Let's do it!
- Yes, and yay
- Yes, and... interview
- Master and Slaves
- One Voice
- One Word
- A,B,C,D
- Entry/Exit
- Freeze Tag
- Song
- Emotional Replay
- Genre Replay
- Words from the heart
- Superhero
- Papers
- Musical
- Typewriter
- Space Jump
- Feeling Shift (mime of day's event)
- Experience Rendering (sound, motion, statue)
- Mime -- what's my job?
- Mime -- who am I? (variation, try to join in, rebuff if wrong)
