Number of players: 5 Tags: Performance, exercise, narrative
When: This is a game we do in performances, and it’s a good warm-up exercise
Overview: Five players line up one behind the other. Whoever is in front always tells the story. The person just behind will, at some point, tap the player in front. Immediately, the player in front stops telling the story (mid sentence, mid word if possible) and peels out of line, going to the back. All the other players take a step forward so that the person who tapped now becomes the in-front story teller, and they finish whatever the previous teller had started (finish the sentence or even the word where the previous story-teller was cut off). They continue until the person behind them taps them on the shoulder, repeating the cycle.
Introduction: "This group is going to tell us a story. The person in front will always be telling the story until they are tapped out by the person behind. Now, I need the name of a story that has never been told.”
Details: This is a narrative exercise where each story teller has to pick up the thread of the story told by the person before. The major technical challenge is to seamlessly pick up the story where the previous person left off, finishing whatever they started without repeating the last word or syllable that was cut off.
The minor technical challenge is to remember to step forward whenever the front story-teller is tapped out. This keeps the line circling in place.
However, there is an overall pacing to this exercise that makes it work in a performance. The first round through the players should each tell one or two lines of the story before they are tapped out. The second round through, the taps should come every half of a sentence of so. The next round should be after only a couple of words, and from the fourth round on, this should be like a one word story. The person in front should be tapped out immediately after they start. This requires that the person who is tapped out run to the back of the line, as the entire line should be cycling through in a fast round. The energy is high, the words need to be distinct, and the story should be built like any one word story exercise.
The director will call a curtain when the story hits some sort of ending line (button).