What’s Going On?
What's Going On is a short-form game in which one performer leaves the stage while the remaining performers establish a unusual or specific activity. When the absent performer returns, they must identify what the group is doing through context, observation, and questions, with the group answering truthfully but not giving the activity away directly.
Structure
The Setup
One performer steps out of earshot while the group and audience agree on an unusual activity: knitting underwater, piloting a blimp, competitive cheese-rolling. The group positions themselves as if in the middle of this activity.
The Discovery
The returning performer enters and interacts with the group, asking questions and making observations. The group answers honestly, referring to their activity without naming it directly.
The Reveal
The game ends when the returning performer correctly identifies the activity or when the scene has generated enough material for a satisfying conclusion.
How to Teach It
Objectives
What's Going On trains the ensemble's physical specificity and the returning performer's observational skills. It also trains truth-telling under constraint: the group must be helpful without being obvious.
Common Pitfalls
The group laughs or breaks when the guesser gets close. This collapses the game. The ensemble must maintain commitment through the pressure of near-discovery.
How to Perform It
Performance Notes
The group's job is specific physical engagement with the activity, not vague miming. The more specific and committed the ensemble's physical life, the richer the material for the guesser.
The returning performer should engage with genuine curiosity and build hypotheses rather than rapid-fire guessing. The scene lives in the process of discovery, not in the moment of identification.
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What Are You Doing is a classic warm-up game in which performers name an action they are doing that is entirely different from what they are physically doing. The game trains performers to generate disconnected ideas simultaneously, warming up the ability to hold multiple realities at once.
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Mystery Word is a short-form game in which performers play a scene while one performer -- unbeknownst to the others -- has been given a specific secret word that they must work into the dialogue naturally and without drawing attention to it. The rest of the performers and audience try to identify when the mystery word has been successfully used, creating a dual layer of engagement: the scene itself and the detective puzzle of watching for the hidden word.
Head in Bucket
Head in Bucket is a scene game in which one performer is unable to see or hear portions of the scene -- either literally (with a bucket, bag, or other prop covering their head) or through a designated convention establishing their character as oblivious. While that performer is "away," the other performers add something to the scene -- an object, a character, a piece of information, a physical change to the environment. The returning performer must discover and justify whatever was added.
What Happens Next
What Happens Next is a game in which performers build an improvised story or scene through a series of offers, with a coach or host prompting each new development by asking "What happens next?" Each offer is accepted, echoed, and built upon before the next prompt arrives. The game trains offer acceptance, narrative momentum, and the collective instinct to advance rather than stall a story.
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). What’s Going On?. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/whats-going-on
The Improv Archive. "What’s Going On?." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/whats-going-on.
The Improv Archive. "What’s Going On?." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/whats-going-on. Accessed September 28, 2026.
The Improv Archive is a systemically maintained repository. The archive itself acts as the corporate author.