Physical Movement

A series of activities for looking at wealth inequality in the US and globally.

This is adapted from a game I learned at Kani Club -- the improv club I participate in from time to time.　(http://kaniclub.com/)

A volunteer describes an incident they experienced -- something embarrassing, funny, puzzling, etc. -- to the whole group. The joker asks questions to clarify details and verify understanding. Then, the joker asks for volunteers to enact the scene. They are free to improvise in any way they like.

The "fist to five" technique for voting or consensus decision-making (see "Dedocracia" can be used for rapid, on the fly, evaluation. It gives people an easy way to practice an important technique for democratic decision-making and the experience of expressing their judgment in a group context. For the facilitator(s) and the group, it provides important information about the usefulness of the techniques being used.

I got this from Kani Club, the improvisation school in Tokyo. It is a great "Yes, and..." game.

Pairs or trios (daunting to do in larger groups, but could be done with practiced players).

The idea is for the players to speak a sentence simultaneously without knowing what the sentence will be ahead of time, relating the sentence to some physical action or pantomime.

This game comes from Tom Wujec. See his very useful detailed instructions and TED talk. http://marshmallowchallenge.com/Instructions.html

For my purposes, the project serves as an experiment in which people can practice cooperative learning, work, and innovation.

Prep the materials ahead of time.
For each group:

In this game, which I learned from Sakiko Ishitsubo, people pair up and take turns closely observing each other, describing what they see. When person A says, "I see you are holding the zipper pull on your jacket." Person B repeats the description, "I am holding the zipper pull on my jacket." In this way each observation is stated and verified. There is no strict sequence, players can shift back and forth as they like. The goal is to observe each other closely, to describe what you see, and to verify the observations.

This is adapted from a game I learned at Kani Club -- the improv club I participate in from time to time.　(http://kaniclub.com/) In Japanese, the game is "watashi -- anata".

This is an idea for an improvisational variation on the Love, Hate, Need activity.

Once people have identified what they Love, Hate, Need, Have, Want, Fear, and Hope, the joker hands out three cards on which are written one of the categories (love, hate, etc) to random players.

The players think for a moment, then must improvise a short (2minute or so) scene in which they act out the thing they (love, hate, need...), interacting with the others on that basis.