Three Line Scene

Two characters, you do a complete scene in three lines. First player speaks twice, second player speaks once.

A: Torvald, your french fries are up.

B: (prissy Scandinavian accent) Zey are beautiful! Lift zem from the canola oil, I must see closer!

A: (lifts them out and inspects) Carl Karcher doesn't stand a chance against you, Torvald.

Unlike Who Where What, you don't have to build the platform one line at a time. In fact, you should probably have a complete platform built in the first two lines.

That sets up the third line, which should cash in on whatever potential has been built up in that short time: a closer.

However tempting it may be, don't add a fourth line. If there is even a possibility of doing a fourth line, then the third line won't be a closer and you'll lose that aspect of the exercise.

A quick but tough exercise. Really breaks you of any habits you might have of making weak offers, like questions or "yeah" or repeating what the other person just said. With so little space, every offer has to be strong. With so little space to set up a closer, every offer has to create potential. You learn to go out on a limb right away.

Committing strongly to a character helps enormously.

And because any non-relevance between your line and the other person's line will be painfully obvious, you really have to listen.

And yet the game also teaches you to take your time responding. When it's your line, you don't have to speak right away. If you're the second player, you only get one line! So you've got to stoke your imagination as much as possible from that first line.

Also teaches you to help our your scene partner by giving something he or she can respond to.

Also teaches just how far you can go in almost no time. It seems like three lines would be limiting, but what you can do in this game is truly infinite. You can't understand how much is possible.

Almost any performing skill or technique can be practiced and learned with this exercise. If you’re working on Yes Anding with newbees, a little side coaching helps them quickly understand why it works, and what happens when they don’t do it. If you’re working on Space Work, have the first player enter holding a mimed object. If you’re working on Platform, players learn how to establish a platform in three lines. If you’re working on Character, players get to try lots of different characters in a short time. We use this in nearly every rehearsal for whatever we’re working on for the evening.