Radio Dial

Players improvise a series of short scenes, rapidly switching between different “channels” on an imaginary radio. Each switch brings a new genre, topic, or group of characters, requiring quick transitions and adaptability.

Radio Play

Players gather around a microphone to perform an old-style radio play. This focuses on vocal performance, sound design, and narrative clarity without visual cues.

Raise the Stakes

Players consciously increase the emotional or narrative importance of what’s happening in a scene. This drives scene progression, creates dramatic tension, and encourages bold choices.

Rant

A row of players takes turns to rant about a certain subject. This encourages passionate verbal expression, comedic exaggeration, and building on a shared theme.

Rash

One player develops an imaginary rash with specific, often bizarre, physical symptoms. Other players in the scene react to and justify the rash’s appearance and effects, leading to comedic and unusual interactions.

Rashomon

Players perform a scene, and then re-perform it multiple times from the differing perspectives of various characters involved. Each re-telling highlights the individual biases, memories, and interpretations, revealing a complex, often contradictory, “truth,” similar to the film Rashomon.

Real Estate Broker

One player acts as a real estate broker showing a property to potential buyers (other players). The audience provides a secret, bizarre feature of the property (e.g., “it’s haunted by a cat,” “the walls talk,” “it’s actually a spaceship”). The broker must try to sell the property, incorporating and justifying its strange features, while the buyers react.

Receiver Right Clap

A quick warm-up game where players stand in a circle. One player starts by making a distinct clap and pointing to the person to their right. The next person must receive the clap and immediately pass it on to their right, maintaining a continuous rhythm. This focuses on listening and quick, directed responses.

Reduction Scene

A scene is performed in a minute, then repeated in shorter times. This develops conciseness, pacing, and distillation of narrative to its core elements.

Re-Run

Players improvise a scene, and then the facilitator or audience calls out “Re-Run!” The players then perform the exact same scene again, but with a specific modification, such as performing it in a different emotion, genre, or with a physical limitation, leading to new comedic discoveries.

Reiterate/Repeat

In a scene, players must frequently reiterate or repeat key words, phrases, or actions that have just been offered by their scene partner, often with added emphasis or a slight twist. This reinforces offers and ensures active listening.

Relay Entrances and Exits

Players perform a scene where characters enter and exit the stage in a continuous relay. As one character exits, another immediately enters, picking up the thread of the scene or bringing a new dynamic. This creates a fast-paced, fluid narrative flow.

Remote Control

One player acts as a “remote control” operator for the scene. They can “pause,” “fast forward,” “rewind,” or change the “channel” (genre, emotion) of the improvisers in the scene, who must immediately comply and justify the changes.

Rendez-vous

Two characters are attempting to meet for a rendez-vous, but a series of comical or dramatic obstacles continually prevents them from connecting. The scene focuses on their persistent efforts and frustrations, often involving near misses or mistaken identities.

Repair Shop

Players improvise a scene set in a repair shop, but the items brought in for repair are unusual or abstract (e.g., a broken heart, a shattered dream, a leaky memory). The mechanics must attempt to “fix” these intangible items, leading to humorous and metaphorical interactions.

Replay

Players play out a scene (based on a given scenario), then replay or reinterpret the scene according to supplied suggestions of emotion or genres.

Replay Gibberish

A scene is first performed in a normal language, and then immediately replayed using only gibberish, but with the same emotions, intentions, and physical movements. This emphasizes non-verbal communication and physical storytelling.

Replay Scene

(Same as Replay) A broad term for any improv game where a scene is performed once and then repeated, often with a new constraint or suggestion applied to the second performance.

Retro

Players improvise a scene that must adhere to the style, conventions, or common tropes of a specific retro era or genre (e.g., a 1950s sitcom, a 1980s action movie, a silent film). The humor comes from the commitment to the period details.

Reverse Chair Dance

Players participate in a group dance, but instead of moving freely, they perform a chair dance where they are physically constrained by an imaginary chair or a set of movements that mimic sitting in a chair, then reverse these movements, often in slow motion.

Reverse Scene in the Dark

Players improvise a scene while blindfolded or in complete darkness. The scene then plays out in reverse, meaning players must move and speak backward through the improvised actions and dialogue, relying heavily on memory and spatial awareness.

Reverse Trivial Pursuit

One player acts as a “game show host” for a game similar to Trivial Pursuit. However, instead of answering questions, players are given answers (often absurd ones) and must invent a question that would logically lead to that answer, often in a humorous way.

Rewind and Unblock

During a scene, if players get stuck or “blocked,” the facilitator calls “Rewind!” and the players physically and verbally rewind the scene to a point just before the block occurred. They then unblock it by making a different, more generative choice.

Rhyme After Rhyme

Players engage in a scene where every line of dialogue must rhyme with the previous line, creating an extended, spontaneous poem. This requires quick verbal dexterity and collaborative wordplay.

Rhyme Fire-Line

A fast-paced rhyming game. One player starts a line of dialogue, and the next player must immediately respond with a line that rhymes and continues the scene. The rhythm is quick, almost like a “fire-line” of rhymes.

Rhyming Couplets

Dialogue is in rhyming couplets, often with one player starting and another finishing the rhyme.

Rhyming Scene

Dialogue is in rhyming couplets. More fun if one player starts each rhyme and another finishes it.

Rhymes

This game has one simple rule: every line must end in a rhyme.

Ritual

A group performs a simple activity as a complex religious ritual (e.g., “Let the toothpaste cap be removed!”).

Ritual Scene

Players improvise a scene that revolves around a unique, often absurd or highly specific ritual. The audience might suggest the purpose of the ritual, and the players must develop its specific actions, chants, or customs, creating a sense of shared, heightened reality.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Infinity

A variation of Rock, Paper, Scissors where players add a third action (e.g., “Infinity”). The actions are performed simultaneously, and players must quickly adapt their strategies, often with a dramatic flair or a narrative justification for their choices.

Roll Call

A warm-up where players stand in a circle. One person starts by striking a pose and making a sound. The next person repeats the previous person’s pose and sound, then adds their own. This continues around the circle, building a physical and vocal sequence that everyone must remember and repeat during the roll call.

Rollercoaster

Players collectively act as if they are on a rollercoaster ride. They must physically and vocally react to the twists, turns, drops, and climbs of the imaginary ride, creating a shared experience of excitement and fear.

Room at the Inn

Players improvise a scene set in an Inn or hotel. The premise is often that there is “no room at the inn” or very limited space, leading to comedic situations as characters try to find accommodation, share rooms, or interact in cramped quarters.

Round Dubbing

Similar to Dubbing, but it’s a continuous round. One player acts out the scene silently, and another player provides their voice. Then, those roles might switch, or a third player might start providing voice for the second, creating a continuous loop of physical action and spoken dialogue.

Rule Breaker

Players begin a scene with a very specific and often unusual rule or constraint (e.g., “no touching red objects,” “all characters must speak only in questions”). One player then becomes a “rule breaker” who subtly or overtly violates the established rule, and the other players must react and justify the breach.

Rumor Has It

Similar to Telephone, students sit or stand in a circle. One volunteer creates a “rumor” about themselves and whispers it to the person next to them. Each person repeats what they heard and adds another element until the rumor returns to the original person, who then recites the entire silly rumor.

Rumors

Players form a circle. One person initiates by saying “Did you hear about…” and points to another player, who must immediately respond affirmatively and escalate the rumor. Everyone in the circle then gasps or giggles. The player to the left of the second person restarts the game.

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