Consciences
Consciences is a scene game in which each main character has an additional performer who voices their conscience, offering moral guidance, warnings, or temptations. The tension between a character's desires and their conscience creates layered comedy and dramatic irony. The game is closely related to Alter Ego but frames the inner voice as a moral authority.
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Related Games
The Gerbil
The Gerbil is a scene game in which one performer plays a character whose behavior is secretly being controlled or influenced by another performer through hidden signals. The controlled player must justify their involuntary actions within the scene's logic. The game creates comedy through the visible struggle between intention and compulsion.
Switch Gibberish
Switch Gibberish is a scene game in which performers alternate between speaking coherent dialogue and gibberish on command. Scene partners must maintain the scene's emotional arc and narrative logic regardless of which mode they are in. The game demonstrates how much communication happens through tone and physicality independent of words.
Id
Id is a scene game in which a performer's unfiltered subconscious desires are voiced by a second player, creating a running commentary of primal wants beneath the surface dialogue. The tension between polite conversation and raw impulse generates comedy and dramatic irony. The game highlights the gap between social behavior and inner life.
Alter Ego
Alter Ego is a short-form scene game in which each main character has a second performer standing directly behind them who voices the character's inner thoughts. Two players perform a scene with dialogue and action while their respective alter egos narrate the unspoken subtext: desires, fears, judgments, and contradictions that the characters would never say aloud. The contrast between what a character says publicly and what they actually think generates natural comedy and dramatic irony. The game highlights the role of subtext in scene work and rewards performers who create clear, exploitable gaps between surface behavior and true feelings. Alter Ego appears across multiple improv traditions and is documented in Andy Goldberg's Improv Comedy among other sources.
Little Voice
Little Voice is a scene game in which one performer provides a running internal monologue for another performer's character, speaking the private thoughts aloud while the character plays the scene with a different outward presentation. The technique adds psychological depth by externalizing what the character would never say. The gap between the inner voice and the outer behavior creates comedy, dramatic irony, and character complexity. The game trains performers to play with subtext and demonstrates how much scene work depends on the difference between what characters think and what they reveal.
Continuing Emotions
Continuing Emotions is a scene game in which performers cycle through a series of emotional states at the direction of a caller. Each emotional shift must be justified within the scene's reality rather than simply displayed, with characters finding a reason to feel the new state given what has just happened. The game trains emotional range, commitment, and the ability to sustain scene logic through rapid change.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Consciences. Retrieved March 17, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/consciences
The Improv Archive. "Consciences." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/consciences.
The Improv Archive. "Consciences." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/consciences. Accessed March 17, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.