How to Play the Historical Recall Improv Game

Improvisational theater isn't just for actors anymore. Anyone who loves making up a scene and knows a little history can play along. At acting class you would call this exercise Through the Ages. At a party you would simply call Historical Recall a hysterical improvisation game.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Host
• Two players
• Audience, the more the merrier

1. Pick 2 guests to be the players. Select extroverted people at first. The remaining guests become the audience.

2. Tell the guests and audience that they will be playing an improvisation game. You may describe it as a version of Whose Line Is It Anyway.

3. Instruct the players to act out a short scene from everyday life. Tell them it should be just 3 or 4 lines each. Give them a minute to confer. It is helpful to have several ideas ready for the first set of players. You may want to suggest Buying A Hat, Having a Breakfast Meeting or Trying to Give Away Kittens.

4. Watch the players act out their scene. Lead the applause so everyone claps. Then ask the audience to call out a historical time period. Have several ideas ready to lead the way. You could suggest the Ice Age, the time of the Roman Empire or the Future on Mars.

5. Ask the players to re-enact the scene they just did as if it were happening in the time period the audience suggested.

6. Lead the applause. Ask the players to re-enact the scene in yet another time period or select two new players from the audience to begin a new round of the Historical Recall Improv Game.

Tips & Warnings

• Give out small prizes that you call Tony Awards to conjure the atmosphere of improvisational theater.