Suggestions For Suggestions

We ask for suggestions to try to build a group-mind between the players & the audience.  It’s not just to prove we’re improvising.  You know how in a monologue de-construction we don’t act out the monologue?  Same thing with suggestions!

 

Suggestions are meant to inspire us, not put us in hand-cuffs.  You should use the suggestion, but not beat the audience over the heard with a literal use of the suggestion.  You have to listen to the audience with an open mind & and open heart, understand the suggestion and allow it to change you.

 

In workshops, we’re pretty good about getting suggestions that lead to “meaty” scenes and deeper relationships, as opposed to occupations or transactional relationships. With a real live audience, we’ve got to take what we can get, but I think we can work with the audience by asking a follow-up question.  “Letter-carrier and customer!”  You can ask, “how do you feel about getting mail?”  It gets you a leg up on finding an emotion based relationship.  It also teaches the audience that we’re all working together to create something new.  It’s not just a parlor-trick where they yell out something that sounds challenging and we have to be clever.  It teaches the audience that we don’t have an adversarial relationship with them.  Our relationship with the audience can be collaborative.

 

 

• Just ask for a word. Feel free to follow up… what does that word mean to you? You can ask this from the same person or from someone else.

• Can I get a relationship? Be careful that they may give you an occupation and you might have to ask a follow-up question.

• What’s your first initial? Then ask the crowd for something that starts with that letter.

• What am I holding in my hands?” (Make a physical offer for the audience. Cup your hands together, hold them a foot apart, or reach really wide)

• Non-geographical location, like the post office or the mall.

• Outdoor location

• Indoor location

• A location that would fit on this stage

• Location too big to fit on this stage.

• Without telling us about your most recent dream… What do you think that dream was trying to tell you?

• Where was your favorite ever vacation? What made it so special?

• Your most memorable birthday? What made it so special?

• Favorite song lyric. What does that mean lyric mean to you? You can ask that question of the same person or someone else.

• What’s a piece of advice that has stuck with you?

• What is a good piece of advice he did not take?

• What is a terrible piece of advice that you did take?

• You can reverse these questions and mix them up.

• The story of your day in five words or less.

• What’s a place you only go once or twice a year?

• What is your favorite color? Ask for something that is the color______

• What is something you do on Thursdays?

• A dog is to a cat like a walrus is to a BLANK.

• A poor choice for collateral.

• Can I get a crucial moment in history?

• Can I get a location that fits on the stage?

• Can I get a non-geographical location?

• Can I get a polysyllabic noun that starts with the letter D (F, G, etc)?

• What’s your favorite holiday?

• What’s your LEAST favorite holiday?

• I’m sorry but the dog ate my BLANK.

• If there was no such thing as fire what would you use to keep warm?

• If you could change one thing about your life, what would it be?

• If you could defy any natural law, what would it be?

• If you could go on holiday in any year in history, when would it be?

• If you could invent a new human organ what would it DO?

• If you could replace your boss with an animal, what animal would it be?

• May I get a backyard activity?

• May I get an occupation that involves no risk of physical injury?

• May I get a horrendous occupation?

• Name a new type of PhD.

• Please describe your family by filling in the blank. The -blank- family.

• Piece of clothing?

• Tell me what was your favourite toy as a child?

• Those are not tears of sadness they are tears of BLANK.

• We know the seven habits of highly effective people.  Name 1 habit of highly IN-effective people.

• Name an animal that I’ll use to create a character.  Follow up with what do you think of when you think of that animal?

• What animal does your spouse remind you of?

• What are you planning to do on your next day off?

• What do you do for a living?

• What would you LIKE to do for a living?

• What did they want to be as a child?

• An unpopular job?

• An unusual or dangerous hobby?

• What did your grand-parent do for a living?

• Name a kind of food you love

• Name a kind of food you hate.

• Name a vegetable.

• What is an excuse to get out of a speeding ticket?

• What is a room in the house, that is NOT the bathroom?

• What is an annoying personal habit?

• What is the name of an unlikely superhero?  What’s their power?

• What is the opposite of the colour (blue)?

• Give me a good excuse for missing work…

• Give me a BAD excuse for missing work…

• Give me a REJECTED cereal name

• Whats your favorite Candy Bar?

• Weirdest thing you’ve ever heard about being dipped in chocolate…

• Where is a good place to take a date?

• Where is a bad place to take a date?

• What family traditions are there, in their families?

• What’s a job around the house you keep putting off?

• A (tedious) household chore?

• How did your parents met?

• A personal quirk

• What’s a regional attraction in your home town that it NOT to be missed?

• Where do you guarantee you would you NOT go on vacation?

• Can I get a title for a book, a song, a movie, a play ...?

• Who’s your favourite author? favourite book? favourite film? ...

• A character from a fairy tale?

• I can live without anything, but not without ...

• On a blind date I'm most afraid that ...