Quick Description
Players mimic items found at a garage sale, and one player interacts with them, prompting each “item” to come to life and share its story.
How to Play
Setup: Gather suggestions of items that might be found at a garage sale from the audience or participants.
Player Roles: Select one player (Player A) to be the shopper. Player A leaves the stage.
Items Setup: The remaining players group together as a pile of items at a garage sale, adopting body positions that approximate one of the suggested items.
Shopper’s Entry: Player A enters the stage, acting as a shopper browsing the garage sale.
Choosing Items: Player A examines the “items” (other players) and selects one (Player B), pulling them downstage.
Item Monologue: Player A identifies what the item is. Player B comes to life and delivers a short monologue (30 seconds to a minute) about their experience as that item, addressing either Player A or the audience.
Repeat: Player A puts Player B back in the pile and selects another item, repeating the process.
Conclusion: The scene concludes when Player A decides which items to “buy” and takes them off stage.
Notes
This has similar qualities to an improv game called Spoon River Anthology. Set in a small town grave yard, members of the community stand up and create a short monologue about their life.
You can use this game to teach different aspects of improvisation.
Being relaxed and saying the what’s obvious to the player about the item they are bringing to life.
Creating Characters as the objects and the shopper.
Origin
This game comes to us from the group Abandoned Minds, from Sedona, Arizona. Thank you!