There are many games in improv that rely on a secret – now this isn’t like a ground breaking secret that you need to declare to the world, but there are games where one member or more of the scene will not be able to know what the others are doing or being and their job is to guess what that secret is. These sort of games are very fun for the audience to watch as they are in on the secret as well and thats what makes it funny and also frustrating. Its hilarious to watch the person guess what the secret is and it is also frustrating when they come really close to the secret and miss it by far.

If you watch Whose Line Is It Anyway then the first game I am going to talk about you will recognise as it’s a fans favourite and that is Party Quirks. This is a game where each member of the party is given a different quirk or action that they have to do when they enter the party scene and the host has to guess what they are doing.

There are many different variations of this game  that I have seen been played there is the normal party quirks and then there is the way of bringing it into a scene. In this format the audience decide what the “host” has to guess about themselves. The host will go out of the room and then the audience will decide what is a memorable made up moment they have to guess and other things such as what they were wearing of doing etc. When the person comes back in they will be thrown into scenes and will have to guess everything that the audience has decided. It’s up to the other team members to bring the support and help the host guess the correct things.

There is another version of this game that is all based on Gibberish. Three members of the group will go out the room and the audience will decide what the person left in the room has to make the others guess. The game is based around a fake murder and they have to guess the room it took place, the profession of who was killed and what was the murder weapon. The clock then starts and each member of the group will come back in and will have to guess what the three things were in gibberish and actions and then the final person has to recite back to the host what they think everything was. This game is basically a big elaborate version of the Whispers game that you play in school.

Another game where a “secret” is used is one where no-one knows the answer in the first place. There will be four people in a scene and each of the people in that scene will secretly chose which member they are going to find funny, another who they are going to find sexy and another one that will make them angry. This naturally creates tension and status in a scene and will make the audience laugh as it will create a narrative naturally and may even cause some rivalry.