This is a fun language/narrative game that will add a nice departure from scenic work that tends to dominate most short-form playlists.
The Basics
One player, A, serves as the host of a poetry evening (perhaps with finger clicking and a smoky persona). They introduce a visiting poet, Player B, who will perform their original poem (with an audience inspired title) in its original language (Gibberish). After each line or two of verse, Player A translates the content into the local tongue (in my case, English). The give and take between the poet and host continues until the poem reaches its culmination.
Example
Player A steps forward and establishes a coffee house feel.
Player A: “Welcome everyone to our special evening of poetry.” (They lead everyone in a finger-snapping ritual.) “It is my pleasure tonight to welcome a very special international voice that we all know and love…”
Player B enters and acknowledges their adoring fans.
Player B: “Kasneeka du vala nexceeta.”
Player A: (translating) “It is my honor to back here tonight with you all.”
Player B: (with a grand gesture) “Zha taloola… mi tanequa.”
Player A: “I present to you… the lonely hat stand.”
Player B: (takes a deep breath and then begins with the utmost seriousness) “Nepiti gasheen falalabe.”
Player A: “The dark room waits beneath a shroud of silence…”
The Focus
Create a poem! There are a lot of gimmicks and comedic bits that can appear in this elegant little game (sadly, often by rote), but they’re not needed (at all) to craft a successful and entertaining experience.
Traps and Tips
1.) Pursue fidelity. As noted below, there will be plenty of opportunities for playful mischief that emerge organically if the players are paying close attention to each other. When the translator endeavors to faithfully and poetically communicate the intended meaning of the poet, this tends to create a more powerful foundation for later earnest or roguish misbehavior. It’s helpful to generally match the vocal cadence, line lengths, and gestural beats of each “stanza,” for example, even if your eventual content is wildly unexpected.
2.) Pursue communication. In the poet position, follow good gibberish etiquette. Don’t let your language and offers become “empty,” and then expect your scene partner to fabricate all the content alone. If they’re listening closely, and you keep circling around one or two sounds/words, they should probably be similarly sparse. This can be fun for a moment or two, but not for the entirety of the poem, so deploy poetically diverse and emotional language (and gestures). When you fight to tell a particular story, the fun increases exponentially for the audience as they recognize mistranslations and unexpected inversions.
3.) Pursue poetry. In the translator position, the game takes on a different vibe when you embrace the rich language of poetry with its metaphors, imagery, word play, and perhaps even a little rhyme. Avoid meandering through first-person narratives that essentially describe a plot in the most denotative of terms – “I woke up. I got dressed. I opened the window…” It’s often helpful to think of the least efficient way to describe the story elements and actions – “Oh cruel sun with your piercing rays beating mercilessly against my eyelids…” I’m a verbose fella, and it’s fine for that not to be your default approach, but seek to find a way to assume a language style that feels elevated in some way so your poem doesn’t start to feel like mundane dialogue.
4.) Pursue play. And then, once the connection is well established, and the poem has a voice and focus, enjoy the mutual creative process. Look for pleasingly unique ways to justify the poet’s energy and offers, explore a specific relationship between the characters and their material, invert expectations or cadences in surprising ways that still honor the storytelling needs – perhaps a long Gibberish line has a starkly short translation (or vice versa), or the poet spends the whole poem flirting with the host (or audience, or both), or the original poem involves a lot of highly specific gestures that the translator must work to honor. Again, I don’t believe this game needs a deluge of these types of choices to succeed, but a little shivving can add delight, especially when the players are clearly enjoying the process.
In Performance
On occasion, I’ve played and seen this game with a third improviser who creates a “modern dance” piece inspired by the translation, often staged between the poet and their host. If your company includes particularly adept (or fearless) movement improvisers, this can be a nice way to feature them. I oscillate between loving and not really loving this variant – the presence of a dancer can tend to make the poet and translator less physical so as not to step on this third element’s toes, which can, unfortunately, lessen their energy and contribution, perhaps even making them resemble talking heads. It can take a little practice to strike a helpful balance of you decide to go this route.
Cheers, David Charles.
www.improvdr.com
Join my Facebook group here.
Photo Credit: Leesa Brown
© 2024 David Charles/ImprovDr
Game Library Expansion Pack I
ImprovDr.com 