Theatre games

Theatre games (also spelled theater games, especially in North American sources) are structured play activities used to train performers in spontaneity, ensemble awareness, physical and verbal responsiveness, and scene-building. They are used as warm-ups before rehearsal or performance, as a method for developing improvisational theatre, as a lateral way to rehearse scripted material, and as tools in drama education, applied theatre, and drama therapy.

The modern tradition is closely associated with the American educator Viola Spolin, who adapted recreational group games she had learned from the sociologist Neva Boyd at Hull House into a system of acting exercises later called theater games. Parallel and later developments include Clive Barker's training work after Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, Keith Johnstone's Impro system and Theatresports, and Augusto Boal's "gamesercises" in the Theatre of the Oppressed. Short-form performance games derived from this tradition reached a mass audience through the television series Whose Line Is It Anyway? as well as comedic troupes in live theatrical settings.

Examples

• Freeze: A game where players jump into scenes frozen in action, encouraging quick thinking and scene-building.

• Mirror Exercise: One partner mirrors the movements of another to build empathy and non-verbal communication.

• Alphabet Game: A scene where each consecutive line of dialogue must begin with the next letter of the alphabet, used to develop focus and narrative flexibility.
• New Choice: A game where a moderator calls for a "New choice!", requiring the performer to immediately replace their last line of dialogue with an alternative, used to explore multiple narrative paths.
• Questions Only: A high-energy game where performers must conduct a scene using only questions; any declarative statement results in a buzzer or elimination.