Triggers

How to Explain It

"One of you is the trigger. You are watching your partner carefully. Every time your partner says a specific word or makes a specific gesture, you react in a specific way we have agreed on in advance. The scene continues. You cannot explain your reaction. Just respond to the trigger every time it happens."

Objectives

Triggers develops active listening at the micro level: the triggered player must track every word and gesture in the scene while simultaneously performing naturally. It also trains physical commitment to a predetermined choice, which bypasses the self-editing that causes players to modulate their responses based on what feels proportionate.

The justification demand on both players (the triggered player explaining their reaction; the other players making sense of what happened) reinforces the improv principle that everything that occurs in the scene can become meaningful if someone accepts responsibility for it.

Scaffolding

Begin with very simple triggers (a single common word such as "fine" or "ready") and very clear, physical responses (a freeze, a stumble, a burst of laughter) before introducing more complex emotional or behavioral triggers.

For groups with facility, introduce multiple simultaneous triggers and assign them without revealing them to anyone except the individual recipients. The scene becomes an ensemble minefield in which any player may be affected at any moment.

Common Coaching Notes

• "When the trigger hits, do not hesitate. Execute immediately."
• "Partners: do not try to avoid the trigger word. Play naturally. Let it happen."
• "Triggered player: the reaction came from somewhere real. Find the reason after it arrives."
• "If the trigger never comes, play a good scene. The game cannot force it."

Audience Experience

For audiences, the Triggers game creates a dual information structure: they can see the triggered player's response but do not know what caused it, mirroring the onstage players' experience of confusion. When the audience eventually connects the trigger word to the reaction, the recognition produces a comedic payoff.

For maximum audience engagement, the trigger should be established in the audience's awareness before the scene begins. Performers can whisper the trigger to the audience (but not to scene partners) at the game's outset, giving the audience the pleasure of anticipating the moment.

Casting

The most theatrically productive casting places the trigger response with a player who can commit to extreme physical or emotional expression without hesitation. Halfhearted triggers flatten the game. The onstage partners should have strong justification instincts, as they must make sense of whatever happens without any preparation.

Triggers as a structured exercise appears across multiple improv curricula as a direct descendant of the behavioral conditioning models that underpin much of physical theatre and actor training. Sybil Noreen Eldredge discusses external and internal triggers in Mask Improvisation for Actor Training and Performance (1997) in the context of what compels a performer's physical response to expand or contract.

In theatrical contexts, Deirdre Heddon and Jane Milling note in Devising Performance (2006) that structural rules using chance, mistakes, and accidents as performance triggers have been a recurring technique in devised and collective creation work since the mid-twentieth century.

Andy Diggles documents a scene exercise in Improv for Actors (2004) in which a player has been assigned an emotional trigger: something ordinary that produces a disproportionate reaction. The exercise requires the triggered player to justify the reaction while the scene players work to understand what they caused.

The specific short-form game format, in which triggers are assigned before a scene and reveal themselves naturally during performance, circulates widely in both educational and short-form improv repertoires. No single originator has been documented.