Game morphing

[MatthewTheIdiot]

We're booked to do a bar mitzvah in a few weeks, and the theme is
movies/Oscar. So, we're figuring on throwing some more movie genre
stuff into other improv, and do some games that have a direct movie
theme.

Now, our normal stage show is in a theatre and more theatrical than
many groups' short-form. We do two games, two gimmick-scenes, two
scenes with no obvious gimmick (thout a "game" may develop, of
course), and then a second act which is a long-form set.

For the bar mitzvah, we're figuring that games and short gimmick-
scenes are the way to go. So last month we did some new (for us)
stuff to deepen our bench, as it were. Same thing planned for this
weekend.

We were practicing a movie mashup game. Trying to take two movies and
mix them for a 3-5 minute scene. Didn't work too well. We discovered
that with most of us being late 30s to late 40s, we don't see quite so
many movies as we used to see. So we shortened them to 1-minute
mashups and figured we'd pepper the bar mitzah set with them. Still
not so hot. By the end of rehearsal we had made it a "scenes from a
hat" game, with two performers each picking one title from the hat and
then wham, bam, a one to five line scene, just for the main gag, and
off to the next pair. That went much better. (Still giggling about
the Elephant Man being the littler girl coming out of the TV in The
Ring.)

I love the way a game can morph from one thing to something completely
different over time, or in this case over 2 hours.

[R.Kevi...@gmail.com]

We just game-o-maticed a game called "There's Something About Sumo"
the other night.

What we came up with was a game where, each time we rang our bell, the
audience yelled out the name of a movie.

We then played out a scene from that movie, replacing one of the
characters with a Sumo Wrestler. Very silly stuff.

I imagine the same thing could be done with any asked-for profession.
It really is a "flurry of scenes" sort of game and, thus, more akin to
a line game than a scene game, but was still good fun.

[MatthewTheIdiot]

I guess our equivalent would be to add a redneck?

Our other recent fun creation is FRAS. Foward-Reverse-Actor-
Switch. Simply two of our favorite gimmick games mashed together.
If the host yells forward or reverse, time flow changes. But, if he
yells "switch" all the actors rotate which character they play. Lots
of fun, and it keeps your focus tight because you have to be able do
all your partners' lines and actions as well as your own.

Matthew.
Raleigh's Village Idiots
idiots.net

[R.Kevi...@gmail.com]

Oh, I like that! Nice one!

I've been a reborn short-form fan in the last year, mainly because
we've been doing games we've "invented" almost exclusively. It is
like being in a band playing original songs as opposed to a band
playing kick ass cover tunes. Even when the original song is a little
junk, you still feel good because you created it. Know what I mean?

Our most popular one at the moment is a "TV and Film Styles" variation
where instead of TV and Film Styles, you get accents and
nationalities. Dreadfully racist sometimes, but hilariously funny.

We should play McCain rallies.