Newsreader
Newsreader is a short-form game in which one performer plays a television news anchor delivering headlines while other players act out the reported stories in real time behind or beside them. The anchor may be unaware of the physical comedy happening nearby, or may react to it. The game rewards deadpan delivery, strong physicality, and the comic contrast between formal reporting and chaotic action.
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TV News
TV News is a short-form game in which performers play television news anchors, correspondents, and reporters covering improvised breaking stories. Other players act out the reported events in real time. The game rewards confident anchor personas, quick-witted field reporting, and the comic contrast between journalistic seriousness and absurd content.
Jeopardy
Jeopardy is a short-form game modeled on the television quiz show format, in which performers provide improvised questions to audience-supplied answers. The reversed format (answer first, then question) demands quick thinking and the ability to construct comedic setups from arbitrary punchlines. A host manages the game board and selects categories, while performer-contestants buzz in with their responses. The game rewards wit, timing, and the ability to find unexpected connections within the quiz show framework.
Story Time
Story Time is a collaborative storytelling game in which performers take turns contributing to a shared narrative, each picking up exactly where the previous teller left off. The story may pass on a word, a sentence, or at the tap of a facilitator. The game trains narrative listening and the discipline of serving the story rather than steering it.
Fortune Teller
Fortune Teller is a scene game in which one performer plays a psychic or fortune teller reading another character's future. The fortune teller's predictions set up scenes that the ensemble then performs, testing whether the prophecies come true. The game provides a natural framing device for a series of connected short scenes.
Sex with Me
Sex with Me is a joke-format game in which performers complete the phrase with audience-suggested comparisons, creating rapid-fire one-liners that build on absurd metaphors. The game relies on the audience's delight in innuendo and the performers' ability to find unexpected angles on a suggestive premise. It is typically performed as a high-energy audience warm-up.
Narrator
Narrator is a short-form game in which one performer serves as an omniscient narrator who describes and directs the action while other players act out whatever is narrated. The performers must physicalize the narrator's words instantly, even when the descriptions become absurd, contradictory, or physically challenging. The game generates comedy from the tension between what is narrated and what the performers can actually do, and from the narrator's power to control the scene's reality with a single sentence. The game rewards quick physical commitment from the actors and creative, descriptive language from the narrator.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Newsreader. Retrieved September 29, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/newsreader
The Improv Archive. "Newsreader." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/newsreader.
The Improv Archive. "Newsreader." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/newsreader. Accessed September 29, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.