This is the handout given at the presentation "Reimagining Humor: Using Improv Games to Develop Oral Literacy Skills". The presentation was given on Thursday at 2PM in room 101. It is a MIcrosoft Word document.

1. Reimagining Humor: Using Improv Games to Develop Oral Literacy Skills
Presented by Suzanne Haxer Toohey, Bloomfield Hills Schools & Cara Trautman, Second City Detroit
Alliteration
Construct comedy by constraining your comments to consecutive alliterative lines.
Alphabet Letters
Students get into groups of four or five. Other students call a letter and then the group forms that letter
with their bodies.
Changing Emotions
Two lists of emotions are elicited from audience and written down by two troupe members. Two players
begin a scene and the people with the lists call out emotions at intervals. Player who corresponds to
caller must change to emotion called out.
Changing Genres
Like Changing Emotions, but genres instead of emotions.
Changing Mall
A list of imaginary stores is collected from the audience. Two actors begin a store clerk/customer scene.
At various times, the name of one of the stores is shouted out by a conductor and the store changes to
that store.
Comic Panel
An unfunny comic strip from the day's paper is discussed. Actors act out various interpretations and
variations on the comic, based on the panel's suggestions and directions.
Consonants
Three actors each get a different consonant. They then improvise a scene where they replace the first
letter of each word they say with their assigned consonant.
Cross the Circle
Have everyone sit in a circle with one person in the center. Person in the middle names something you
have, have done, or can do (e.g. cross the circle if you have ever jumped out of a plane, if you own a
dog, have blue eyes"). Those people that can give a positive answer to the question will cross the circle
and find an open spot of someone else that answered positively. There should be one person left in the
center. This person then gets to pick the topic.
Day in the Life
The MC picks a member of the audience and interviews this person about their average (work) day.
Questions asked may include `What is your job?", "Where do you live, with who?", "What are your
hobbies?", "How do you get to work?", "Who are your colleagues?", and more. The players then
improvise a day in the life of this audience member, based on the elements provided by the interview.
Don't make me laugh
A scene is built around a very serious topic (death, illness, etc.) Any player who laughs must leave and
have his place taken by another player.
Empty Dialog
Actors given 6 to 8 pre-written lines of vague and non-committal dialog and try to make it a definite
scene with distinct characters. Example dialog:
Hello
Good Evening
Did you bring it?
Of course I did.
Any problems?
Nothing I couldn't handle.
I wouldn't want anything to go wrong.
Everything will be fine.

2. Famous Last Words
MC asks the audience for famous (living or dead) people, or characters in movies, cartoons or songs.
Players line up and invent `famous last words` for the subjects given by the audience.
Good Things/Bad Things
Alternately good and bad things happen to the players.
We got on a rollercoaster...
and it flew off the tracks...
and flew away on magical wings...
to the land of leaky toliets... etc. etc.
Can be narrated by the actors or by a narrator.
Group Activity
One player begins miming an action. As other players figure out what the action is, they enter the space
and begin miming actions related to the first player. Players can interact. Eventually, everyone is
involved in the same sort of activity.
Hesitation
Players establish a scene and then at intervals hesitate in the middle of a sentence and audience should
shout out suggestions to fill in the blank. Players then continue the scene, trying to incorporate and
justify suggestion.
I Did What I Could With What I Had (credit to Cara Trautman & company)
The teacher creates a deck of cards; each card has a list of three random objects (could be taken from
content area curriculum or could be non-related vocabulary words);
Student draws a card from the deck and tells a story relating all words together; in the end, the student
says “I did what I could with what I had”;
Letter Replacement
Two actors create a short scene. Each has a letter that they cannot say that is replaced by a letter
suggested by the audience. e.g. must substitute 'f' for 'b' 'Are you enjoying the farfeque? Would you like
a furger or some fred and futter?'
Press Conference
Audience-selected celebrity or representative of organization, etc. is interviewed by reporters from
preselected magazine. Reporters ask questions appropriate to their magazine. Magazine examples: Soap
Opera News, Popular Mechanics, Boys' Life.
Soundscape
The actors must change the mood of the scene to match the mood of the accompanist’s music.
Sounds Effects Story
Audience suggests elements to be included in story. Best with stock story-line like detective story.
Audience provides sound effects. Usually one of characters narrates in first-person so as provide lines
like 'Then it began to rain...' 'I slammed the door...' etc.
Truth or Lie
A very simple exercise: someone makes a statement and other people have to decide if it's the truth or a
lie. To make it harder, the other people can ask questions.
Umm… Game (credit to Sally Behrenwald)
Teacher has a deck of topic cards (could be related to content area vocabulary, characters from literature,
etc.)
Students must speak about that topic until they say “umm…”
When “umm…” is spoken the student is out
The student who speaks the longest is the winner
What could possibly go wrong now?
Players begin by building a scene (perhaps with a suggestion of a goal from the audience). A director
freezes the action occasionally and asks the audience "What (else) could possibly go wrong now?"
Whatever disaster the audience responds with happens to the players.

3. Waiter
Prepare by getting audience members to write nouns (including specific places, people, etc.) on slips of
paper. One player sits at a table with a soup bowl full of the slips of paper. The other players line up.
The "customer" pulls a slip of paper out of the bowl and says "Waiter, I've got a (noun) in my soup."
Someone steps out of the line and utters a witty one-liner response. Repeat until out of paper or booed
off stage.
World's Worst
Get suggestion of occupation, social situation, etc. Players line up then step out with the worst thing to
say or do in that situation.
$5 Rhombus
A parody of '$25,000 Pyramid.' 20 random words (4 sets of 5) are suggested by audience and written by
on a large piece of a paper. Two teams of two then take turns trying to guess sets of words. The partner
who knows the words, tries to get the other person to say them without saying the word itself.
Helpful websites:
http://fuzzyco.com/super/improv/games.html
http://improvencyclopedia.org/games/index.html
http://www.unexpectedproductions.org/living_playbook.htm
http://www.learnimprov.com/
http://www.whoseline.net/show/games.html
References:
Ellis, R. (1997) Second language acquisition research and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lee, G. (1999). Positively Independent: Developing oral fluency via task design. JALT applied materials:
Cooperative Learning (pg. 117-125). Tokyo: Japan Association for Language Teaching.
Simich-Dudgeon, C. (1998). Classroom Strategies for Encouraging Collaborative Discussion. Directions in
Language and Education (pg. 3-15). Washington, DC National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education.
http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/curric/files/links/Strategies1.doc DECS Languages & Multicultural Education
Portfolio. Accessed September 10, 2009.