Teaching Game 4: Exercises
narrow focus, fun results
It’s hard to teach game. I guess there’s three common lessons:
be aware of unusual things
find emotionally real ways to accept unusual things
call things out gently to explore them
And that’s all hard to put into a structured exercises. But here are a few I’ve found that help! These are not in any order.
Weird World Scenes
The gist: 2-6 people do scenes. The only rule: everyone is on board with everything. No one thinks anything is a bad idea.
Teaches: saying yes, peas in a pod and justification / mapping.
The mechanics: Do it with a group, like six people. Give them a suggestion and they do 3 scenes. They edit. Walk-ons and tag-outs allowed.
Notes:
Go through the scenes and say what the main unusual things were. Keep it simple.
“The dad is really into cheese.”
“In this world, everyone really loves going to the dentist.”
Try to include the reaction in your description. “When someone brings up going to the dentist, we scream with delight.”
Note anytime people say a philosophy. “I love the dentist, pain makes you stronger.” This is a justification.
Note anytime people use an analogy. “Going to the dentist is just like going to a concert.” This is a mapping. Treating the dentist as if it were a concert.
You Wanted To See Me?
The gist: A boss gives an assistant 3 “normal” requests and 1 weird one.
Teaches: Being a gentle voice of reason, and calling stuff out.
The mechanics: 2 people up. You assign one to be the boss and the other to be the assistant. Scene starts with the boss alone at a desk. Assistant enters and labels what job the boss has “You wanted to see me, farmer?” The boss responds with 3 “normal” tasks and then 1 weird one.
“Order some grain, milk the cows, schedule the workers’ shifts and…… let’s get a karaoke machine for the chickens.”
The weird thing can be anything: a little weird, a lot weird.
The person playing the assistant’s main job in this scene is to find out WHY the boss wants the weird one. They can also suggest reasonable alternatives, point out what problems are gonna be caused by the request.
No matter what the job, we act like it’s normal for the boss to be in an office and to have an assistant.
Notes:
The main lesson here is how to be a good “voice of reason.” Note how an assistant sounds when calling stuff out: respectively, polite, gentle.
Note how ANY “why” from the boss helps us continue the scene. If we know WHY, we know other stuff about the boss.
Wide Eyes and Furrowed Brow
The gist: One person does the scene with their eyes big and wide, and the other does it with their forehead scrunched up.
Teaches: fool energy, voice of reason energy
Mechanics: This is a silly exercise that lets people have fun while trying on some different energies.
2 people up. You assign one to keep their eyes wide the whole time and the other to keep their forehead furrowed. If those physicalities aren’t natural: you can replace wide eyes with smiling the whole time, and you can replace “furrowed brow” with “raised eyebrows.”
Those are the only rules. The idea is the wide eyes encourages a fool/wildcard energy and the furrowed brow encourages a skeptical energy.
Alternate format: 2 fools (wide eyes) and 1 voice of reason (brow).
Note: Don’t worry if the “fool” doesn’t really act like a fool or if the voice of reason doesn’t really act like a voice of reason. Just let them do the silly exercise and feel some different energies.
Background: There’s a Steve Martin bit on his “Don’t Get Small” album where he says something like (this is from memory so it’s approximate) “People come up to me and say Steve! Martin! How can you BE so f***ing funny? And I’ll tell you. Every morning when I get dressed I put a slice of baloney into each shoe. And then I FEEL funny.” And that is the whole joke. And even though it’s silly and surreal I was convinced that there are physical / mechanical ways to bring out a mischievous feeling in people, and keeping your eyes wide / smiling is one way to do it.
And finally here is a two-part exercise called “Fight Well” which demonstrates playing an unusual behavior. This is from a past article so I’m just cutting and pasting and thus these will be in a different format.
Fight Well Part I: Foolish Gift
Someone starts with an “explain this” initiation. You endow the other person with some kind of weird behavior.
One: You want to tell me why you skipped work to make a snowman in the yard?
In response, the person must agree they did it and say why. Here’s a variety of reasons.
Other: Play is more important than work.
Other: I’ve realized my childhood was incomplete.
Other: Because work sucks and I hate it.
Other: It’s research. I’m an architect and I’m doing research.
Those are all “internal reason” (philosophy / emotions / desire). Those are better than “external reasons” (outside forces). Here’s some external reasons.
Other: The boss paid me to stay home.
Other: My spouse is making me play with my kids.
Other: A wizard is requiring me to do this or else he will curse the family.
In those cases, the real star of the scene is not in the scene (the boss, the spouse, the wizard).
Say yes to the foolish gift, and the fight is fun.
Fight Well Part II: Unreasonable Complaint
Part two is where the person making the complain is being obviously unreasonable. In response, you simply play it real.
One: Could you please stop being five foot ten inches tall? It’s humiliating to me, a shorter person.
Other: I cannot stop doing that.
Or this
One: Honey, aren’t you going to help me wash the dishes? Otherwise they get mad. The dishes, I mean.
I like to use dishwashing scenes for fight examples because — side note — every single scene about a couple washing dishes becomes a fight.
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The “you wanted to see me?” Is grate. It workes really well, and it is also good a exercise for the one playing the unusual character.
You wanted to see me (which I call 'Fatmer' because that example just got me) and Fun accusations are some of my favorite exercises to run. Eyes/Brows sounds like a blast and also a way to incorporate physical reactions beyond writer's brain dialogue. I'll try that this Tuesday for sure!