Quick Description
Three players tell three monologues a few lines at a time and the stories eventually interweave together.
How to Play
Three players perform interwoven independent monologues.
Three players come downstage and face the audience. Each one gets a suggestion or two for their character (occupation, what’s important to them, etc).
Player A starts delivering a monologue and gets 4-5 lines into it before Player B interrupts to tell his/her monologue. No continuity of words/grammar needed.
Player C then interrupts with their own monologue.
Player A or B then interrupts again to keep telling their monologue, jumping ahead in the monologue rather than picking up from where they interrupted.
Interwoven
Players keep interrupting to tell their monologues, jumping ahead each time, in no particular order. Their stories begin weaving together such that by the end, we learn that they have all been speaking about the same event and their interactions with each other.
Notes
There are so many things to discover with this structure. Do the actors ignore each other as they perform their monologue? Do the act as if they are telling their side of the story to friends?
Be bold…start each monologue deliberately not connect to the stories revealed in the preceding monologues. Trust that they will connect. Discover it with the audience.
Origin
This games was generously sent to me by Holly Thorsen of San Francisco who learned it from Bard Braende of Norway. They got together with over 100 other improvisers at the Applied Improv Network conference in Portland Oregon USA.
Check out the Applied Improv Network. It’s free to join and great to connect with the international improv community.
Get The Playbook so you have hundreds of games in your pocket when you need them.