Totems
Totems is an exercise in which players select a personal physical gesture, sound, or stance that represents their energy or character for the session. The totem serves as a grounding tool that performers can return to for focus and confidence. The exercise connects physical expression to emotional state and builds self-awareness.
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Related Exercises
Complete Bodies
Complete Bodies is a physicality exercise in which players practice using their entire body to communicate rather than relying primarily on face and hands. The exercise challenges performers to express emotional states, status, and character through the spine, torso, hips, and legs as well as through their more habitual expressive channels. It builds physical range and presence for scene work and performance.
Meditation to Scenes
Meditation to Scenes is an exercise in which performers begin with a brief guided meditation and then immediately bring the images, sensations, or emotional states that arose in meditation into an improvised scene. The exercise trains the ability to work from genuine internal experience rather than externally constructed premises, using the quieted, image-rich state of meditation as a source of authentic material for scene initiation.
Foot Soldiers
Foot Soldiers is a physicality exercise in which performers focus attention on their feet and how different footwork patterns create distinct characters. Changes in stride, weight, tempo, and contact with the floor transform a player's entire presence. The exercise demonstrates that character begins from the ground up.
Obstacle Course
Obstacle Course is a physical exercise in which players navigate a real or imagined series of obstacles using their bodies expressively. The exercise may be used to build physical confidence, practice environment work, or warm up the body before performance. It trains spatial awareness and encourages bold physical choices.
Heave Ho
Heave Ho is a group energy exercise in which players build shared physical momentum through synchronized movement and vocal sounds, working toward a collective release. The group rocks or sways together, building rhythmic energy through a repeated "heave" motion, until a shared peak is reached and the group releases with "ho." The exercise builds group synchrony, physical awareness of collective rhythm, and the experience of shared energy building to a shared release.
Emotions Characters
Emotions Characters is a character-building exercise in which performers construct a character whose entire identity is defined by a single dominant emotion. Rather than playing a character who experiences an emotion, the performer plays a human being for whom that emotion is the organizing principle of their existence: a person constituted entirely by joy, or anger, or longing, or fear. The exercise develops the skill of using emotion as a generative foundation for character rather than as a surface-level behavioral quality.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Totems. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/totems
The Improv Archive. "Totems." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/totems.
The Improv Archive. "Totems." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/totems. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.