Straight Story
Straight Story is an exercise in which performers tell a complete, coherent story without jokes, tangents, or comedic heightening. The discipline of playing it straight reveals the inherent drama in simple narratives and teaches performers that honest storytelling can be more compelling than cleverness. The exercise builds trust in sincerity as a performance tool.
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Related Exercises
Truthful Scenes
Truthful Scenes is an exercise in which performers are challenged to play scenes with complete emotional honesty, avoiding joke-seeking, deflection, or ironic distance. The exercise builds comfort with vulnerability and teaches that sincere, grounded performance often produces the most compelling and genuinely funny work.
Telltales
Telltales is a storytelling exercise in which performers share short personal or fictional anecdotes and the group identifies the dramatic elements, emotional beats, and scene potential within each story. The exercise bridges personal narrative and improvised performance, teaching players to mine stories for their scenic essence.
Object Narrative
Object Narrative is an exercise in which a performer tells a story while handling imaginary objects that become central to the narrative. Each object must be physically specific and consistently maintained throughout the telling. The exercise integrates storytelling with object work and teaches performers to anchor abstract narrative in concrete physical detail.
True Stories
True Stories is an exercise in which performers share real personal stories that serve as launching pads for improvised scenes. The authentic emotional content of the true story grounds the subsequent improvisation in genuine human experience. The exercise bridges personal narrative and collaborative performance.
Lcd
LCD (Lowest Common Denominator) is a scene exercise in which performers practice finding the simplest, most universal emotional truth in a scene rather than reaching for clever or complicated choices. The exercise trains the instinct to ground scenes in recognizable human experience. It rewards simplicity over sophistication.
Without Sound
Without Sound is a scene exercise in which performers play an entire scene with no vocal output, communicating exclusively through physicality, facial expression, and gesture. The exercise reveals how much of scene work can be conveyed nonverbally and trains performers to make bold, clear physical choices.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Straight Story. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/straight-story
The Improv Archive. "Straight Story." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/straight-story.
The Improv Archive. "Straight Story." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/straight-story. Accessed March 17, 2026.
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