These Are The Games We Play - Actor's Nightmare
We love, love, love this game! Actor’s Nightmare (also known as Understudy) is a game that can descend into chaos and gosh, it’s so fun when it does.
THE PREMISE
Firstly, we send a player out of the room, they are the understudy and will have no knowledge about what is about to happen. The Ref asks for a suggestion and the remaining team members perform an improvised scene, usually with a member from the opposing team. At the conclusion of the scene, that opposing team member will come down with an illness that will prevent them from performing (probably a dodgy curry or something) and the understudy is brought back into the room.
The scene is replayed from the beginning, with the understudy endeavouring to perform the scene as it was just performed, without having ever seen it before.
The RUles
One player is banished from the room where they put their fingers in their ears or eat a carrot stick.
Two or three players improvise a scene.
A player gets ‘fully sick.’
The understudy returns, and the players perform the scene as accurately as they can.
Tips for playing
The actors from the master scene should commit fully to performing the scene as if it was a written scene.
The master scene should make the character who is going to be replaced important.
The understudy should be bold, make strong choices and let the other players justify them. They should also be listening and yielding where appropriate (but not completely drop their character)
In the master scene make physical offers or clear initiations that can be signposts for when you repeat the scene. The addition of a new player will often make these offers and initiations change meaning which is always a source of lols.
Sometimes you can play this game where you don’t know who is going to be the sickie. You perform the scene and then the audience decides on who’s going to be ill. We don’t do it that way because it’s a team based game in our format but it is definitely a fun way to play it.