Five-story building
A structured group scene about a house with five "floors", where parallel storylines gradually converge. Suitable for training story linking, ensemble play, and focus on character goals.
Players
5–8
Difficulty
Beginner
Full description
Setup and Launch
Tell the audience you will play stories of residents in a five-story building. Ask the audience to name who lives on each floor (types of people, professions, roles) — one suggestion per floor. Actors choose residents for their respective floors and formulate simple, clear desires, goals, and problems for their characters.
Briefly clarify relationships within each floor (who is who to whom) and give floors clear spatial markers so they don't get confused. Agree on the first round: quickly run through all floors from 1 to 5 to establish the worlds, and remind everyone that the stories will begin to interweave later.
Play
The coach maintains pace, watches for clear floor distinctions, and ensures character desires and goals stay in play and drive scenes toward intersecting storylines.
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First round — introduction: five short scenes, one per floor. In each scene, clearly establish who lives here and what their immediate problem/goal is.
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Return visits by floor: return to floors, moving characters toward their goals. Show attempts, obstacles, and consequences so storylines gain momentum.
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Interweaving: allow encounters between floors (staircase, courtyard, shared business), introduce cross-influences and thematic rhymes between stories.
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Escalation: raise the stakes and frequency of connections between floors; the decisions of some residents noticeably affect others.
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Common event/finale: bring several storylines together in one house moment and give short, expressive resolutions or echoes of each story.
Key rules
Keep floors distinguishable: briefly state the floor number/context and who lives here at the start of each scene.
Don't oversaturate: 1-2 vivid characters per floor is better than a crowd; extras — merge or remove from frame.
Track goals: if a character's goal is lost, ask the actor to voice it again through action or dialogue and immediately try a step toward it.
Cross-floor meetings — purposeful: allow intersections only when they move storylines or create a thematic connection, not for a random joke.
Round pace: the first round should be very short, leaving time for interweaving and the finale; stop overly long scenes with gentle editing.
Context
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