These Are The Games We Play - Stone Age Shakespeare
The Big HOO-HAA! is essentially an improvised variety show. Over the course of a night you'll see songs, one-liners, scenes, stories, and a whole bunch of games. Each team chooses which games they'd like to play, and after more than fifteen years of making stuff up, we've played a lot of them.
In this series, we're pulling back the curtain on some of our favourite formats, exploring how they work, why audiences love them, and what makes our players choose them in the first place.
The first game we’re going to highlight is a newer one for us, a riff on Shakespeare Bogan.
Stone Age Shakespeare
The Premise
Stone Age Shakespeare combines eloquent Elizabethan language and monosyllabic neanderthal narration.
Two or three performers begin an improvised scene. At any point, the referee can blow the whistle and force the players to switch between speaking in Shakespearean language and speaking only in simple, monosyllabic words.
The challenge is keeping the scene coherent while your vocabulary is constantly being ripped away from you.
The Rules
Two or three performers create an improvised scene.
Players begin either in Shakespearean language or monosyllabic speech.
When the referee blows the whistle, performers must immediately switch styles.
The scene continues until the referee ends it.
Tips For Playing
The biggest mistake players make is focusing too much on the language and forgetting the scene.
The audience isn't laughing because you know Shakespeare. They're laughing because you're trying to have a serious conversation while your ability to communicate changes every thirty seconds.
Even so, when in Shakespeare mode fully lean into the tropes of Shakespeare; metaphor, simile, couplets are all tools at your disposal and it’s even more fun to be interrupted when creating a wondrous flowery metaphor only to end it with one syllable words.
And on the flip side, when in cave man mode do not let the story slip, the characters do not devolve in anyway other than their command of language. Stay committed to the relationship and objective of the scene. The language is simply the obstacle. Like any other hoop game, good improv is good improv.
You will likely find the contrast between the two modes is that in Shakespeare you spend a long time speaking one thought, and in caveman mode, you’re direct and to the point. After all I think it was Shakespeare that said that ‘brevity is the soul of wit.’ or rather he wrote it down and some actor said it for him.
An example of a scene
The suggestion: two workmates
Beginning in Elizabethan:
A: Darryl thy mug was left within the sink unwashed once more, you, my friend are a man of ill repute.
B: Marcus thou knowest I am a man most busy. I have time none for such domestic duties.
Whistle
A: You should do dish wash when you done.
B: I do not wash. I am big boss.
A: You should wash. Why should me wash?
Whistle
B: Thou, as a vassal unto my estate must to me be loyal. Treat me not as pawn but as your royal.
A: Zounds, I am not long for this here vocation. I do resign and no longer am in this conversation.
Fin.