What Are You Doing

What Are You Doing is a circle or pair game in which one player performs a physical activity while another player asks what they are doing. The performer names a completely different action, which the asking player then performs. The disconnect between the stated action and the performed action trains free association, spontaneity, and the separation of verbal and physical channels. The game is a standard warm-up across improv, educational, and applied contexts.

Structure

Setup

The group stands in a circle. One player is chosen to begin.

Gameplay

The first player begins performing a physical activity with specificity and commitment: brushing teeth, rowing a boat, playing a violin. A second player in the circle approaches and asks: "What are you doing?"

The first player must immediately respond with an activity that is completely different from what they are actually doing. The named activity should be stated without hesitation or thought: "I'm climbing a mountain." The first player stops. The second player now performs the named activity. A third player approaches and asks, "What are you doing?" and the cycle continues.

Gavin Levy describes the game in 112 Acting Games (2005) as a circle exercise: players are encouraged to make their named activities specific and vivid, and to resist the temptation to describe what they are actually doing. Linda Belt and Rebecca Stockley describe a pairs variant in Acting Through Improv in which two players alternate the question-and-answer cycle, building speed until the disassociation becomes automatic.

Mark Newton identifies the core cognitive demand in Improvisation: the game requires players to "disassociate their physical actions from their verbal actions," training the ability to operate simultaneously on two independent channels without either channel interfering with the other.

Pacing and Progression

Begin at a comfortable pace and increase speed as the group develops facility. When the game runs well, players should not be thinking before they answer; the named activity should arrive before conscious deliberation can intervene.

For educational or applied groups, Janeece Kramer notes in Improvised Theatre and the Autism Spectrum (2015) that the game is especially useful for developing stage presence alongside free association: students are simultaneously managing physical commitment and verbal spontaneity.

Pairs Variant

In the pairs format, Player A performs an activity; Player B asks, "What are you doing?" Player A names a different activity; Player B performs it; Player A asks, "What are you doing?" The cycle continues, alternating questions and named activities, with both players performing and naming in rapid succession.

How to Teach It

How to Explain It

"One person mimes an activity. Another player walks up and asks, 'What are you doing?' The person miming has to name something completely different from what they are actually doing. Then they stop and start doing whatever they just named. The next player walks up and asks the same question. Keep going. The only rule: you cannot name what you are actually doing."

Objectives

What Are You Doing trains three distinct skills simultaneously. First, free association: the player must produce a verbal response without deliberation, trusting the first thing that arrives. Second, physical commitment: the body must sustain specific, believable action while the mind is engaged elsewhere. Third, channel separation: the verbal output must be genuinely independent of the physical performance, not a description of what the hands are doing.

The game also reinforces the improvisational habit of immediate response without self-editing, in a context where there is a clear and entertaining failure state (naming what you're actually doing) that makes the principle legible to beginners.

Scaffolding

For new players, allow a slightly longer pause before requiring the named activity. Gradually shorten the permitted response window. For groups with facility, remove the pause entirely and require instantaneous response.

For players who consistently describe what they are actually doing (the most common failure), Gavin Levy recommends that the facilitator name the failure pattern clearly and offer the cognitive trick of looking away from the physical activity before answering, breaking the visual feedback loop that triggers the description.

For applied contexts, the game functions as an accessible entry point to discussions of multitasking, cognitive load, and the difference between reactive and deliberate communication.

Common Coaching Notes

"Do not look at your hands before you answer. Look up."
"You named what you were doing. That is the one thing you cannot say."
"Faster. Your brain is the problem here. Don't give it time to interfere."
"Commit to the physical activity completely, even while you are naming something else."

How to Perform It

In Short-Form Contexts

What Are You Doing works as a competitive short-form game in which players are eliminated when they pause before naming an activity, name something too similar to what they are doing, or break character in the physical performance. The last player remaining wins.

The audience pleasure in this format comes from watching players contend with the cognitive interference between body and language under time pressure. Quick, absurd named activities tend to land better than plausible ones because the gap between performance and declaration is funnier.

Pacing in Performance

In performance, the facilitator or emcee should sustain a quick rhythm; long pauses between questions flatten the game. Players should be coached in advance that hesitation is the enemy: a wrong answer delivered immediately is more entertaining than a correct answer delivered slowly.

History

What Are You Doing appears across improv curricula from the 1990s onward as a widely-taught warm-up game. Gavin Levy documents it in 112 Acting Games (2005) in both circle and pairs variants. Linda Belt and Rebecca Stockley include it in Acting Through Improv as an early session exercise focused on speed and immediate response. Mark Newton documents it in Improvisation under the designation WAYD and identifies the disassociation of physical and verbal channels as its core training objective.

Jillian Gesell describes the game in Playing Along (2016) with the framing that it trains players to focus on what is actually happening rather than what is being said, connecting the exercise to broader improv principles about behavioral reality versus declared narrative.

The game appears in applied contexts in Theresa Dudeck's Applied Improvisation (2018) as a tool for building the skill of "seeing new possibilities in what is familiar," alongside Keith Johnstone's Changing the Object and Viola Spolin's Transformation of Objects exercises. No single originator has been identified; the game circulates as shared warm-up practice.