Playing the "Family Portraits" Improv Game

Video Transcript

"Hi. We're here learning how to do some improv warm-ups. And now we're going to show you how to play a warm-up called "Family Portraits." To play "Family Portraits," you're going to have your larger group divided into smaller groups of three, four, or five. Once you have your groups, each individual group of three, four, or five is going to take their turn being on stage, while a designated caller calls out different categories of people or characters or even abstract concepts that might come together to take a family portrait. At which point in time, the group that's on the stage will have to position themselves as if they were those specific things, and take the family portrait. So, I'm going to demonstrate with my friends. And let's go ahead and do the family portrait as if we were all friends in an old folks home. Shall we? Once the team--once the group or team has frozen into a position, the designated caller will then call out a different category of people, animals, or concepts that the actors will then try to recreate. So let's go ahead and say that now we're a family portrait of excitement--the abstract concept "excitement." Ok? And that's more or less how you play "Family Portraits.""