Ping-Pong Theater

If you are ever bored on a road trip, needing to distract from minor foot pain on a long walk, or forcing your partner to support your new Improv obsession, we’ve got a game for you.

The game is based on the Improv principle of creating a Base Reality, which is defining who the characters are and their location. What you’ll do is start a set with a single word/concept for a prompt. From there, the first player starts a round by using that prompt to assign themselves a character and their game partner a different character, set the location, and tell a small story about what they are doing. The next player then takes the next round and builds out another scene in the same way. This goes back and forth until both players feel like they have played out the prompt. Ideally, things get pretty wild, and there’s a clear curtain call on a scene that wraps everything up or takes things to their most ridiculous end.

Alright, ready to play?

Set 1

Prompt: Yo-yo

Player 1: I’m a Kindergarten teacher, and you’re a student in class during a Show and Tell talent show. You brought your yo-yo and are showing off all your cool yo-yo tricks.

Player 2: I’m a Kindergartener, you’re my neighbor. You’ve invited me to go to the park to walk the dog. You bring your dog and I bring my yo-yo.

Player 1: I’m a game show host and you’re a contestant who just won the grand prize, a Trip Around the World. After celebrating, you’re presented with a yo-yo by a sequin-clad Barker’s Beauty doing the Around the World yo-yo trick.

Player 2: I’m a talented young prodigy who dreams of becoming a famous cellist, you’re my mom who has already chosen my perfect career path, a world-famous yo-yo master. You even cemented it on my birth certificate. All I want to do is make music. I’m a huge disappointment.

Player 1: I’m a resentful mother whose only son dishonored me by playing the cello. You are a bright young yo-yo competitor, alone, away from adult supervision. I am looking for redemption at a yo-yo tournament, a second chance to raise someone I can be proud of.