I know this game primarily as a skills exercise, although it has immediate helpful applications for all your scenic work as well.
The Basics
Teams preselect a reason for a “family” meal as well as a type of cuisine. For the duration of the scene, players must engage in heated conversation while paying particular attention to the physical and tactile aspects of the meal being shared and consumed. Scenes may be played concurrently or shared before the greater class or ensemble.
Example
Players select a pizza party gathering amongst co-workers celebrating the completion of a rather daunting sales pitch.
Player A: (entering with a heavy and visibly hot stack of pizza in boxes) “I really can’t thank you all enough for putting your noses to the grindstone for the company this last week.”
Player B: (clearing a spot on the communal table for their boss while others happily take a seat and start distributing imaginary plastic cups) “I’m hoping this isn’t the sum total of your appreciation, Joce. We are getting close to bonus season!”
The group laughs somewhat awkwardly as Player C twists off the top to a large bottle of soda and starts filling cups.
Player A: (prying open the first box of pizza to determine its contents) “Let’s just say this is my first act of appreciation…”
Player D: (sliding behind A and grabbing a sticky slice of cheese pizza that doesn’t quite want to let go of the box it came in. After taking a large bite, and with a partially full mouth…) “I’d happily take all my paychecks in pizza if that was an option!”
D tries to bend their slice to prevent the cheese from all sliding off. C raises a cup as others start to descend on the open box.)
Player C: “Here’s to the best quarter yet and charming the socks off those Icelandic investors…”
The Focus
Eat the meal. Explore your senses. Tell a story.
Traps and Tips
1.) Consider touch. How heavy are the various components of the meal – the dinnerware, cutlery, serving dishes and the like – and do these objects change weight as food and beverages are consumed? Is the food particularly sticky, grimy, flaky, or dry? Does the greasy pizza have everyone reaching for napkin after napkin, or did it get here too late and so is now as hard and cold as a board? To assist in the exploration, it’s helpful to select a type of cuisine that everyone has some firsthand experience eating so that these types of details can be discovered and then mirrored and supported by the team.
2.) Consider taste. What are the specific qualities of the various items that you can discover and heighten? Does one character find the food too salty while another keeps adding more to suit their preference? What is the temperature of the foodstuffs – too hot, too cold, just right? Is it an appropriate level of spiciness, or too overwhelming for the less adventurous, sending some participants back time and time again to their water glasses for relief? What changes to the meal are you inclined to make in order to increase your overall enjoyment? Are you inclined to mask your character’s true experience so as not to cause offense?
3.) Consider smell. How does smell influence the whole dining affair and connect you to past experiences that might be pleasant or not so pleasant to recall? What does that first whiff of pizza do to you (and your character) as A carries the boxes through the door? Is cheese one of your favorite smells, or it is mildly triggering? Does something on your plate smell funky, or enticing, or unexpected? Does your nose tell you the contents of one of the serving dishes before your eyes can even perceive the arrival?
4.) Consider sight. In addition to the appearance of the food items themselves, what is the greater geography of the meal? Where are things positioned in relation to each other? What details can you create, maintain, and support as the meal progresses? Is there a keeper of the soda bottle, or a place where the salt and pepper shakers are always stowed, or a corner trash can where each empty pizza box eventually becomes discarded? What visual peculiarities endowed on the meal itself can add nuance, interest, and perhaps even story elements? Is someone picking off all the pepperoni slices before you can even get to the pizza box to claim an unadulterated slice for yourself?
5.) Consider sound. This may be the trickiest of the senses to conjure without an improvising Foley artist embellishing the action, but don’t neglect the soundscape of the whole affair as well. What sounds are you perceiving, and perhaps of even greater value, what sounds are you adding to the scene as you consume, and chew, and sip, and cut, and scrape, and nibble, and belch? While some of these sounds may be imagined – such as a pretend knife clinking against a pretend plate – they are nonetheless fodder for the scene and shouldn’t be ignored. Played with care and abandon, the meal might even take on an orchestrated feel with sounds rhythmically dueling and combining.
In performance
Usually, an emphasis is placed on experiencing the food rather than talking about it incessantly, so avoid having a scene where everyone exclusively announces how they’re eating the available fare! (I don’t think it’s helpful, however, to needlessly police brief references to the activity, as sometimes you just need to ask your neighbor to pass the potatoes…) It can prove quite challenging to develop interesting conversation while also paying extreme attention to the food-related choices and endowments of your scene partners, but n ability to achieve this honed level of multi-tasking will ultimately serve your improv well.
Cheers, David Charles.
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Photo Credit: Kalani Senior
© 2025 David Charles/ImprovDr
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