Who Am I?
Who Am I is a guessing game and character exercise in which one participant is assigned or endowed with an identity, fictional character, or real person visible to everyone else, and must determine that identity through yes/no questions or through reading other performers' reactions, training endowment, characterization, and observational reasoning.
Structure
The Setup
One participant either steps away while an identity is assigned to them, or they are endowed openly while the group knows and they do not. The identity may be a fictional character, a type of person, a celebrity, or a fictional role.
The Discovery
The participant asks yes/no questions of the group, or enters a scene where other performers treat them according to their endowed identity, providing contextual clues through behavior rather than direct statement.
The Reveal
The game ends when the participant correctly names their identity or when the scene has produced sufficient material.
How to Teach It
Objectives
Who Am I trains observational reasoning in the guesser and endowment specificity in the ensemble. In scene versions, it trains performers to maintain a consistent relationship to an assigned character type without breaking the fiction to explain it.
Common Pitfalls
In scene versions, performers over-signal by making clues too obvious. The scene collapses into demonstration rather than genuine fictional interaction.
How to Perform It
Performance Notes
In scene versions of the game, the performers who know the identity should behave as their characters would behave toward that type of person, not as helpful audience members trying to give clues. The scene must be real.
The guesser should build and commit to specific hypotheses rather than random-guessing. The more specific the hypothesis, the more useful the yes/no feedback.
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Related Games
Famous Person Endowment
Famous Person Endowment is a guessing game in which one performer is secretly assigned a celebrity identity and must deduce who they are through interactions with scene partners who know the answer. The endowed performer does not know their identity and must read their scene partners' reactions, offers, and endowments to figure out who they are playing. The game rewards lateral thinking, careful observation, and the ability to accept endowments and build on them without the security of knowing the full picture.
The Party
The Party is an improvisational game in which players take on character identities and interact at a simulated social gathering. In the most widely documented variant, each player is assigned a character they do not know (the identity is written on a card or otherwise concealed) and fellow guests drop subtle conversational hints to help the player deduce who they are. The game develops listening, subtext, and character awareness simultaneously.
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.
Double Endowment
Double Endowment is a short-form guessing game in which two performers are each secretly endowed with a character trait by the audience, and both must simultaneously figure out their own trait from the clues the other performer is giving. Each performer knows the other's secret trait but not their own, and must embed clues for the other player while interpreting the clues being embedded for them. The result is a mutual guessing dynamic that rewards listening and responsive improvisation.
The Lineage
Explore the schools and structures that influenced or evolved from Who Am I?.
112 Acting Games (Levy)
How to Reference This Page
The Improv Archive. (2026). Who Am I?. Retrieved September 28, 2026, from https://improvarchive.org/games/who-am-i
The Improv Archive. "Who Am I?." The Improv Archive, 2026. https://improvarchive.org/games/who-am-i.
The Improv Archive. "Who Am I?." The Improv Archive, 2026, https://improvarchive.org/games/who-am-i. Accessed September 28, 2026.
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