What Do You Want
A scene in pairs where each person writes down their character's desire in advance, known only to the audience. Performers guide the partner to recognise their "want" through behaviour and dialogue, training attention, reading signals and give and take.
Full description
Setup and Launch
- Hand out paper and pens. Each participant writes down what their character wants: from immediate ("want ice cream") to big and global ("want world peace"). Both can be specified.
- Two performers come on stage. Before coming on, they hand their notes to improviser-observers in the audience. The observers read them privately. The audience knows both desires; the performers only know their own.
How It Goes
- The pair plays a scene. Each person's task is to construct their behaviour and lines so that by the end of the scene the partner can "read" their desire without having heard it stated literally.
- When choosing words and physical actions, the participant asks themselves: "Why does my character want this? How do they pursue it? How do they see the world in light of this desire?"
- Performers observe each other attentively and calibrate the exchange: they take initiative to give the partner needed clues, and yield focus to pick up and use the partner's clues (give and take).
Key rules
Don't reveal the desire directly; convey it through actions, intonations and phrasing in dialogue.
Maintain give and take: alternate initiative and yield focus to exchange the needed information.
Track the partner's offers and build your responses to help them read your signals.
Context
What to try next
Similar formats, so you can keep the rehearsal moving without stopping to search.
Date
A short stage piece about a date where the guitar controls the shift in tone and the characters' status. Useful for training instant switching, intonation and relationsh…
Associations and Dissociation
A warmup for quick thinking and associative agility: three escalating modes from direct response to dissociation, where you deliberately avoid any connection.
What You Think of Me
A team-building exercise on trust, active listening and observation. One participant sits in the centre; the group offers guesses about them, then formulates positive ob…
What Are You Doing?
A split-attention warmup: mime one physical action while naming a completely different one. Trains you to stop narrating what you do in scenes.
You're Awesome!
A paired warmup for support and connection: participants take turns saying "You're awesome!" to the partner and backing it up with a specific reason. The exchange of com…
First-Try Struggle
A warmup for working with an imaginary object through demonstrative "struggles". The participant acts as if doing it for the first time: the battle with small mishaps ma…