Ted Talks
Ted Talks is a short-form game in which a performer delivers an improvised presentation in the style of a TED Talk on an audience-suggested topic. Other players may provide slides, demonstrations, or audience participation. The game rewards confident public speaking, the ability to sound authoritative on any subject, and the comedic gap between expertise and ignorance.
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Related Games
Slideshow
Slideshow is a performance game in which a narrator presents a series of still images formed by the ensemble, describing them as photographs from a trip, event, or life story. The physical performers create tableaux that the narrator must explain and contextualize. The game combines physical sculpture with storytelling and rewards inventive narration.
Guest Game
Guest Game is a short-form guessing game in which one player hosts a party while other performers arrive as characters with secret identities or traits assigned by the audience. The host must determine each guest's secret through interaction. The game rewards clear character physicalization and the host's observational acuity.
Motivational Speaker
Motivational Speaker is a short-form game in which a performer delivers an improvised motivational speech on an audience-suggested topic, often with the help of other players who provide visual aids, physical demonstrations, or audience participation segments. The game combines public speaking with character work, as the performer creates and sustains a larger-than-life self-help persona throughout the presentation. The game rewards confident stage presence, commitment to absurd premises, and the ability to find genuine emotion and persuasive logic within comedic material.
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.
No P
No P is a short-form guessing game in which one performer must communicate an idea, tell a story, or answer questions without using any word that contains the letter P. The audience and host watch for violations, and the comedy arises from the performer's increasingly creative circumlocutions and the sudden, involuntary slips that reveal how deeply embedded common letters are in everyday speech.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Ted Talks. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/ted-talks
The Improv Archive. "Ted Talks." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/ted-talks.
The Improv Archive. "Ted Talks." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/ted-talks. Accessed September 28, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.