Eventé
Also known as: The Eventé
A long-form built around one audience-suggested event: play the event, explore its characters in background scenes, then replay the event with what you learned.
Full description
Setup and Launch
Ask one audience member for an event — a wedding, a dorm fire, a graduation. This event is the center of the whole show. Agree in the team who starts the first scene: it establishes the event and the people in it. Decide in advance how you will edit scenes — for example with a sweep edit, where a player walks across the front of the stage to end the scene.
Flow
1. The event scene
Play the event itself. Show who is in it, what happens and where. Do not answer every question — the gaps give material for the next scenes. For example: at a wedding the toastmaster gets the bride's name wrong, and the groom's brother stays silent all evening.
2. Background scenes about a character
Pick one character from the event and play several scenes about them. Show their life outside the event: the past, relationships, what the others never saw. For example: the groom's brother — three scenes about how he proposed to the same bride a year ago.
3. Return to the event
Play the event scene again. Now you know what the background scenes revealed, and the event changes: the brother's silence reads differently, lines gain a second meaning. Do not retell the background scenes — just play the event with the new information in mind.
4. New character, new return
Pick another character from the event — the toastmaster, say — and play several background scenes about them. Then return to the event once more. Repeat the cycle while there are characters left and while the event keeps revealing something new.
Key rules
One event for the whole show — it comes from the audience and does not change. Only what you know about it changes.
The first event scene should leave questions open — because the background scenes exist to answer them.
Background scenes are about one person from the event. Do not spread across everyone at once: the next character gets their own cycle.
The return to the event is the same event, not a retelling. Play the same circumstances with the new knowledge, and the audience will see the difference.
Every return must add meaning — if the background scenes changed nothing in the event, they did not work.
Format structure
Context
Resources
What to try next
Similar formats, so you can keep the rehearsal moving without stopping to search.
Armando
A long form in which a monologist tells the room true stories from their own life, based on an audience suggestion. The cast improvises scenes inspired by those stories.
Monoscene
A long form made of one scene: one location, one span of time, no external edits.
Harold
Long form: a single audience suggestion unfolds into a collage of scenes that interweave and connect by the end.
Sleep Over
A mono-character form: each actor plays one character from start to finish of the show.
Character Perspectives
A long-form where actors take turns delivering monologues from different characters, all inspired by one audience object. Characters connect to the object but not direct…
True Hollywood Stories
A long-form show. The cast interviews an audience member, then explodes their life into a sensationalized celebrity story: humble beginnings, rise to fame, tragic downfa…