SetupIdeas

Setups

General

• Gameshow: Who Wants To Save Private Ryan?
• Quaker fratboy
• The Accidental Sitcom
• Lighting candles in church (sing about Monsignor!)
• Feed birds. Eat one.
• Climb a glacier.
• Superhero surveys the city.
• Find your fishing hole.
• Go ice fishing.
• FBI agent breaks into (suspect's?) home.
• Dancing in the supermarket
• Accent ray (Cockney, Gilbert, George Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Shaft, Shatner, Ed Mc Mahon)
• It's really damned hot. Damned hot.
• Appliance therapist
• Ticket scalper (good seats in the nude section)
• Brain like an answering machine: "Beep! You have two new thoughts. First thought:..."
• Someone is kneeling and meditating. Players come from offstage as thoughts.
• Foreign Film Dub -- only done with ASL, so the dubbing is at the same time as the 'lines.'
• Literal emotional baggage; a couple checks into a hotel and hands to the bellboy ...
• Samurai Sky Marshal
• Word-at-a-Time President of the United States

• Aspidistra

  • The director announces that the players are going to play 'Aspidistra.' When the players demand to know what 'Aspidistra' is, they are told that the director has no idea, s/he just picked the word 'Aspidistra' arbitrarily, and the players can make up the rules of this game as they please. Surreal fun for everyone ensues.
  • (Supply players with bell, buzzer, monkey as necessary.)

• Sitting, Standing, Mollusk

  • Sitting, Standing, Gilbert
  • Sitting, Standing, Cosby
  • Sitting, Standing, Covered in Spiders
  • Sitting, Standing, Monkey
  • Sitting, Standing, Pirate
  • Sitting, Standing, Dead

• Gibberish Opera

  • Opera in a language the players don't know, but will happily fake
• Curious Excess of Sound Effects (more of an exercise -- do a silent scene where off-stage 'foley imps' provide sound effects for absolutely everything)

• DVD Commentary: Requires two improvisors who can do passable impressions of two other improvisors. Concept kept in pocket as four people are gathered up. Two of them do a medium-length silent scene. Then, we repeat the scene, while the other two imps are offstage on mics. The offstage imps pretend to be the two on-stage actors doing a DVD commentary on the scene.

  • Amy's thought: simplify by just doing the two-hander and having the DVD commentary from, say, the director, at the same time.
• Answering Machine: like radio play, the lights go down, except for perhaps a single blinky red light, center stage. The director has something that will beep loudly. We pretend the blinky red light is an answering machine, and we are hearing the messages in sequence. The key is for the sequence of messages to tell a simple, cohesive story.
• Video Game: Two 'players' are downstage with controllers. Other improvisors enact what's going on in the video game.

Doctors and Psychiatrists and Brains

• Emotional checkup ("Your self-pity is a bit high, not dangerous, but something you should watch. Turn your head and cough. Hmm, we need to run some tests on your fear of committment, it seems inflamed. Are you seeing anyone right now?")
• Brain like an answering machine: "Beep! You have two new thoughts. First thought:..."
• Someone is kneeling and meditating. Players come from offstage as thoughts.

• Literal emotional baggage; a couple checks into a hotel and hands to the bellboy ...

  • "Oooh, and take this valise of 'I'm not really pregnant.''"
  • (As the couple heads upstairs) "Don't worry. We'll be back for all this in an hour."
• Appliance therapist
• High-tension diet

Language Manglage

• Welsh is funny.