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

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.

Simple, familiar, quick dialogue game.

Two rows of people facing each other, standing close enough to hear each other over the noise of others speaking. Joker chooses a theme and explains the rules -- both people should talk and listen, one minute, when time is up one line shifts one person to the left. (The last person on the row moves to the other end of their line.)

Often used for introductions. Can also be used for a check-in, or for rapid discussion after another activity.

Based on the famous speech by the Meiji era Japanese feminist leader Kishida Toshiko, this activity asks participants to create a manga version of her speech, working in teams.

I have spelled out a nine step process, but it might make sense to do a much quicker, rougher version of this, to leave time for other discussions. Steps 1, 4, 5 are essential, I think.

Step one is to read the original essay (for Japanese readers, in Japanese), and do a reader response writing activity.

Step two is to form teams with a mix of self-identified skills/capacities:

Like a nightmare scenario, in this case teams take a given, established object, situation, institution, relationship, saying, etc. and try to disprove it, brainstorming, prioritizing, and presenting reasons why it can not work, be true, etc.

Teams compete to make the most convincing arguments. (Need to think about criteria for a convincing argument.) Can be decided by a team of judges, or by the joker(s).

Like Ten Levels of Why, but going the other direction.

Start with the last reason given in Ten Levels of Why.

Spoken version:
The player says her/his sentence out loud, then one person says, "so...?"
The player must give a consequence; "So..."
Then another person asks "So...?" and the player must give a consequence that flows from the previous statement... and so on, until ten so's have been asked and answered.
At the end, the person repeats the original sentence and the tenth consequence.