🪦Coffins

Setup and Launch

Place three chairs with their backs facing the actors. Actors sit astride facing the audience and lay their arms on the chair-back, resting their heads on their arms. Ask the audience to give the three actors different characters (for example: a cheerful ballerina, a greedy writer, a president). Condition: all three died on the same day and in the same place, and the task is to tell how they got there.

Game rule: heads can only be lifted and lowered together with a short "coffin lid creak"; only the person whose head is raised speaks. Actors may go in any order and interrupt each other, but when one starts speaking the others immediately lower their heads. The game ends when each character has told up to the moment of their death.

How It Runs

The trainer monitors pace, cleanliness of the "one head — one voice" rule, and ensures individual stories converge on a single point in time and place.

1. Routine starts. Each actor's first entries establish the character's everyday life: gestures, habits, activities, small details — everything that sets a recognizable routine without narrating biography.

2. Switches on "creak." Each new entry is preceded by the short physical action "lift head — creak — speak." If two heads are raised simultaneously, a quiet gesture reminds one to lower — this avoids overlaps.

3. Converging stories. Once each has established their routine tracks, push toward a shared circumstantial point: one day, one place. Ask for specifics (place name, time, objects) so threads can easily interweave.

4. Finale. Each character speaks their moment of death. The third death — a clear button: pause, heads down — end of the format.

After the third death, add no new lines: a clean silent picture with heads lowered gives a clear ending.