Age: 7+
Players: Two or more
Time: 5 – 15 minutes
Space: The audience sits in front of a park bench, which will most likely be made of three chairs
Materials needed: a bench (or three chairs put together)
A fun improvisation game that is likely to provide some comical moments.
One actor sits on the park bench. Their objective is to focus on one or two tasks. They might, for example, drink coffee while writing an important email to their boss on their phone. Or they might be an influencer posting online. Or they might be a father feeding their young baby a bottle of milk. Or they might be trying to eat their lunch in peace.
The actor focuses on their task, and then a second actor joins them on the bench. The second actor has an obsession. For example, they might be obsessed with planes. Perhaps they'll look at the sky and tell the person next to them: ‘That plane passing overhead is Flight 4078 travelling to Singapore, and it will arrive at 12:07 local time.’
The person next to them is likely to react. Then the obsessive person might launch into more information about planes. As the scene plays out, the obsessive person's behaviour will probably make the other person react more and more. The obsessive character can be fixated on anything: dogs, singing, what others think of them, their nails, alien invasions, books – anything.
You can have your students play this live in front of an audience, or you can split them off into pairs so that they can work on polishing the improv together, both getting a turn at each role.