It’s September again which is what I like to say is a new improv season, I don’t know why, I think it’s because the improv classes I used to go to always started a new season at this time of year like school (or more realistic the summer after the festivals).

I think when it comes to this time of year, it is important to focus on one thing – the basics. So all this month we are going to look at different areas and how they can be used and developed.

I am not a teacher but I have learnt so much from others so let’s try and bring important things to light that stuck with me that may be able to help you in the future.

Emotions

Games that help you practise emotions are so helpful as it can really develop and evolve your emotions. As you evolve as an improviser, they became more natural but for some improv to really allow it to work you have to push the emphasis on the heightened versions. This can be a lot of fun. It can make new improvisers feel silly but the results are good.

What is so good about it?

Doing different style games to practise emotions means that in the future it can really elevate your scene work. When you are starting improv it can be really easy to forget to do this when you play a scene fully. These exercises can help you build do you focus on it more and learn about them to eventually it all becomes natural.

Also, if you are into short form improv these can be a real set of games that can be super fun to use to rehearse or perform.

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Ways to play

There are so many fun was to play games for emotions – there are rollercoaster games (change emotions when told), scenes with different extremes of emotion and replaying a scene with different emotions.

There are also ways you can spin it on it’s head and do a scene wit no emotion so you can really see the impact emotions have on a scene.

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How to make it more complex

Why not put all the emotions in the hat where they are pulled out at random. To make it really complex, make all the emotions really difficult or unique to really push you.

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