Sometimes when we do improv we forget about the fun involved and one thing that can really bring the silliness back into rehearsals is by focussing on Gibberish style exercises and games. The wonder of talking nonsense and made up words means that you naturally focus on the actions and not your words. This sort of improv can help you develop the way you are in scenes whilst boosting your characters profile.

There are many ways you can use gibberish to help you improve your improv – here are a couple of fun games you can play:

Movie Dub – Get two players to perform out a mini conversations and actions in a scene with two other players acting as the ‘translators’ at the side of the stage. The key to making this work well is that the two in the middle make quite ridiculous movements that the other two have to justify and narrate to the audience. Good fun, quite a hard game to master but great to develop.

Gibberish to Scene – I don’t know what the real name is for this game but it is a good one to help develop characters. Get two people to do a scene, get a suggestion of a location and then get them to improvise the scene is complete (the editor of the scene make sure that it is kept short). Then get the players to redo the scene exactly the same movements and actions only this time no gibberish but with words and sentences, It is a great way to bring movement to a scene in a new way.

Photo credit: Photo by Skitterphot on Pixels