Ultimate Improv Book

This is a comprehensive manual that explains the “who, what, when, why, and how” of comedy improvisation. It provides tools to start an improvisational team or club, a complete curriculum program, and strategies for putting on a show and evaluating performance.

Ultimate Young Actors Guide

Written to encourage young actors, this book combines insightful, informative teaching with a light-hearted spirit, covering the secrets of acting.

Unable to Move

For some reason, one or more players are unable to move for a scene. This challenges players to improvise with physical limitations, relying on verbal and facial expression.

Unconventional Duet

Two players improvise a scene or performance in a highly unconventional duet format. This could involve an unusual combination of characters, a unique physical constraint, or a non-traditional way of communicating, pushing the boundaries of typical improv duos.

Underscore

Two people improvise a scene physically, without words, while a film soundtrack plays as an underscore. They are directed to physically “yes and,” agreeing on the physical environment and activity and adding to it.

Up and Down

A variation of “Status Transfer” where the status transfer can flip back and forth a few times in the scene.

Verbal Freeze Tag

Similar to physical freeze tag, but players freeze their dialogue instead of their bodies. When a player calls “Freeze!”, the speaking player must immediately stop mid-sentence or mid-word. Another player then “tags in” verbally by taking over the conversation from that exact point, continuing the dialogue seamlessly.

Verses

This typically refers to a musical improv game where players improvise a song composed of multiple verses. Each player might take a verse, or the group might collaboratively build each verse, focusing on consistent rhythm and rhyme scheme.

Virus

One player introduces a “virus” into the scene, which could be a physical tic, a repeated phrase, or an unusual emotion. Other players in the scene then slowly, and often unknowingly, “catch” the virus and begin to exhibit the same behavior, leading to comedic escalation as the “infection” spreads.

Voices From Heaven

Players are in a scene, and a facilitator or offstage player provides “voices from heaven” — short, often absurd, instructions or commentaries that the players must immediately justify and incorporate into their scene, as if they are divine guidance.

Volcano

Participants walk around the room. The teacher shouts an object and counts to five, and everyone must physically form that object together before the count reaches five (e.g., “Volcano,” “Microwave oven”).

---