Who Am I?
Who Am I is a guessing game and character exercise in which one participant is assigned or endowed with an identity, fictional character, or real person visible to everyone else, and must determine that identity through yes/no questions or through reading other performers' reactions, training endowment, characterization, and observational reasoning.
Structure
The Setup
One participant either steps away while an identity is assigned to them, or they are endowed openly while the group knows and they do not. The identity may be a fictional character, a type of person, a celebrity, or a fictional role.
The Discovery
The participant asks yes/no questions of the group, or enters a scene where other performers treat them according to their endowed identity, providing contextual clues through behavior rather than direct statement.
The Reveal
The game ends when the participant correctly names their identity or when the scene has produced sufficient material.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Who Am I trains observational reasoning in the guesser and endowment specificity in the ensemble. In scene versions, it trains performers to maintain a consistent relationship to an assigned character type without breaking the fiction to explain it.
Common Pitfalls
In scene versions, performers over-signal by making clues too obvious. The scene collapses into demonstration rather than genuine fictional interaction.
How to Perform It
Performance Notes
In scene versions of the game, the performers who know the identity should behave as their characters would behave toward that type of person, not as helpful audience members trying to give clues. The scene must be real.
The guesser should build and commit to specific hypotheses rather than random-guessing. The more specific the hypothesis, the more useful the yes/no feedback.
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Related Exercises
Who Where Why Am I
Who Where Why Am I is a solo and ensemble scene-starting exercise in which performers establish the full context of a scene through action and environment rather than dialogue, committing to a specific who, where, and why before the first word is spoken, training physical specificity, environmental grounding, and intentional entry.
Celebrity Press Conference
A volunteer leaves the room; the audience assigns them a famous identity. The volunteer returns and answers questions containing embedded clues until they guess who they are.
The Lineage
Explore the schools and structures that influenced or evolved from Who Am I?.
112 Acting Games (Levy)
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Who Am I?. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/exercises/who-am-i
The Improv Archive. "Who Am I?." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/exercises/who-am-i.
The Improv Archive. "Who Am I?." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/exercises/who-am-i. Accessed September 29, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.