Games for a Writers' Salon

Video Transcript

"Now in this clip we're going to talk about games for your salon. As well as writing and being a good support group, you want to get writers on their feet, because I think that's the best way to really stimulate creativity. Now one game is a variation on, I'm sure, something you've played before, where you have a person start a story and about twenty seconds later, a group leader will ring a bell or clap their hands and mid-sentence the next person will pick up the story where this person left off with the same basic plot, same characters, but just take it in a different direction. And then, again, they'll be a clap or a bell and the next person will take up. Now the variation here is that each person will be assigned with a certain style. So the first person, say for instance, will start the story sort of in a children's theater style, and the next one who picks it up will continue the same story, same plot and characters, but it will be the style of a heavy tragedy. And then the next one will pick it up and it will be as a light comedy, then the next one a melodrama and it will go around that way. So you're really getting exposed to a story told in all sorts of different styles. Now there's one game that's a real favorite among writer's an actors that I've worked with and it's called freeze tag. Now clear an area to make a sort of a stage, you can have one chair there, but otherwise you can have it pretty empty. Send two people up there and you give them a situation. Let's say someone is delivering a pizza to the other person. Now it's mimed in terms of that there are no props, everything is imagined and it's pantomimed, but people will actually be speaking dialogue. It's sort of up to them to create a conflict as it goes along. So it's not like, 'Here's your pizza, I'm gone' and that's the end of the scene. But there might be a conflict that develops like, oh the person gets it, opens it and there's a piece missing. 'Did you take my piece of pizza?' Or this one says "Now that will be thirty-two dollars." Wait a minute. Whatever conflict arises and they've got this, and then maybe the person is taking it and they're fighting back and forth with this pizza box. At any time you say freeze, both actors have to freeze and you'll assign someone else from the audience to come up and take either one of their places. But they will begin the scene sort of based on this prop. And let's say now it becomes a lid from an ancient tomb. So they both work together without discussing it, they're not allowed to discuss this at all. They're opening up the tomb and seeing this mummy there, and talking back and forth and maybe one wants to get out of there because there might be a curse, or whatever conflict might be with this. And then again, you'll call freeze, send someone else up there to take their place and this will become something totally different. The more physical it becomes with miming the props, the easier it will be. Get a sense of the timing, see when a scene starts to be playing itself out a little too long, you can call freeze. Also you don't want to call freeze too fast so nothing has time to develop. So it's sort of a sense you get. And after you do it with this group a few times, people will catch on enough to where you don't need to assign people to come up, just people in the audience will on their own yell freeze when they get an idea. I've seen actors develop characters from just these freeze tags that would make an incredible character in a play. So you might see this character of the person opening the tomb lid and it might be such a unique character that you can fit that sort of thing into your play. Now this game is a wonderful warm up for your writer's salon. But also it kind of has a way of sticking with you, so you'll really be able to use it to get those creative juices flowing when you're working on your own play during the week."