Players will find themselves in odd positions in this justification classic.
The Basics
Team members (typically four) spread across the playing field. Audience members (or an opposing team) have a limited amount of time to quickly pose each improviser’s body into a specific pose. The sculptors then leave the playing field. A location or inspiring ask-for can be gathered by the host (or players can use nothing more than their positions to launch the action). One at a time, plyers unfreeze and come to life, justifying their prior statuesque positions as important facets of the unfolding story.
Example
The team stands onstage at the ready, and four audience members place them in dynamic poses as the host leads a ten-second countdown. Amongst other components, Player A has been modeled to cover their eyes with their hands, Player B is lying on the ground with their hands over their chest, and Player C is crouching upstage behind a large block. The volunteers leave the stage, and the host decides to grab an ask-for – “cemetery” – before the lights fade to start the scene.
Player A: (stumbling forward as they become animated) “Okay, I’m trusting you, but this is really the strangest first date ever.”
Player C: (from behind their block, jovially) “Just a few steps more, and you can open your eyes…”
Player A: “And you’re not going to give me even the slightest clue as to where we’re having our picnic…?”
Player C mischievously darts behind another obstacle to prolong the game, just as B, a seemingly dead body, slowly starts to reanimate much to C’s shock.
The Focus
Enjoy the challenge of really using your poses in connected and important ways as the building blocks of a unified scene. This format shares a great deal with Scene from Music (discussed here). The mechanic for finding the opening positions is different, but the tools for successfully incorporating those poses remain largely the same. So, review this earlier entry to further expand on the concepts below.
Traps and Tips
1.) Make the most out of your poses. Use every detail of your assigned pose to the best of your ability. It’s anticlimactic (and not particularly helpful to the scene) if you quickly drop the essence or energy of your position just to do or say that thing you wanted to do or say anyway. When the poses really shape the characters, action, and story, the game will similarly deepen and expand.
2.) Make space for your teammates. It’s helpful to think of every unfreeze moment as a unique form of character entrance. Once you’ve found a way to justify your physicality, make sure you’re keeping an eye out for others who are in the process of doing the same. If you sense another player coming to life, give them focus so that their choice can be seen and heard by the cast and the audience. Excited over-talking will rob the scene of these pivotal moments (and the company of the innate gifts contained within each justification).
3.) Make every unfreeze count. Players might find themselves quickly joining the fray within the first few beats of the action, but generally, the scene benefits from patient and disciplined additions. I’ll often play this game as a one- or two-minute scene, and in these cases, it’s common to have at least one player remain unutilized until the climax or latter portion of the story. When you pace entrances deliberately, each new entering character can help advance the story to its next exciting moment. When everyone panic unfreezes in a clump, you’ll often meander to the end of the scene without the gift of an expertly timed reveal or discovery.
In performance
For a fun twist on the game, consider Reverse Statues where players must end up in the given poses rather than start with them. Once positions are set, players can start the scene on- or off-stage as they wish. (Just be careful not to set up a bunch of furniture in the countdown that will then get in the way of achieving the desired tableau. If you want a more dynamic arrangement of blocks or set pieces, put these in place before cast members are assigned their random positions.)
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Cheers, David Charles.
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Photo Credit: Tony Firriolo
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