Intermediate Improv Exercises
Exercises for improvisers who know the basics and want to push past the plateau. Focus on emotional range, status, recovery, and scene-level skills.
Yes, And Chain
Be Positive — the literal-words version of accepting and extending offers. A universal beginner drill taught at every school.
Status Transfer
Status awareness and the ability to shift status dynamically within a scene. Setup: Two players. One begins high status (confident, still, expansive), the other low status (fidgeting, deferential,...
No Backspace Scene
Irreversibility — the felt experience of path dependence. Borrows from Johnstone's New Choice mechanic but enforces forward rather than replacing. Setup: Two players do a scene, 3-5 minutes.
Mirroring
Deep attention, body awareness, ensemble connection, yielding/leading as a spectrum. Viola Spolin's core exercise — taught at every school, in every first class. Setup: Two players face each other.
Fracture Repair Drill
Fracture recovery — the ability to re-establish shared reality when two players have diverged. Setup: Two players begin a scene.
First Line Drill
Be Brave — the threshold moment of starting. Setup: Players line up. One at a time, each steps out and delivers a single declarative first line that commits to something — a feeling, a relationship,...
Emotional Honesty Scene
Be Honest — sending clear, authentic signals without distortion. This is the scene-length application of Do-Feel-Say.
Emotion Switch
Be Changeable — the ability to fully shift emotional state in response to input. Setup: Two players in a scene.