Help! Are There Any Improv Games for Two People?

As a two-person group, we can tell you with confidence that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of games that can be played with two people

Here’s a sampling of some of our favorites (and how, if necessary, we’ve adapted them)

• New Choice – We simply “new choice” each other instead of having another actor do it for us
• Hyper Flashback – A series of flashbacks that often end up taking us into ancient, if not stone age, times!
• He Said, She Said, They Said – Play a scene. After your scene partner completes a line of dialogue add a stage direction in the format of , “She said, making kissy faces.” The other actor must then follow your direction. One of the great “pimping” games.
• Honk Ding – We get the story of how two people met and we recreate it. When we get something right, they ring a bell. When we’re wrong, they honk a bicycle horn until we get it right. We love this game, and so do audiences!
• Guessing games – Like Repair Shop, Shopping list, or Three Things
• Moving Bodies – Goes by many other names; it’s where we perform a scene, but audience members have to move us around
• Whose Line? – Where the audience writes down lines of dialogue and we have to randomly incorporate them into the scene
• Double Endowment – A personal favorite of ours! While the other person is out of hearing range, one actor gets two things they have to get the other to do during the scene (“Sing Happy Birthday” or “Eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich”), then the other actor does the same. They then play a scene and have to surreptitiously guide each other into doing those activities without outright telling them to. Audiences watch as each player tries out different activities, only to be very wrong! A sure-fire laugh getter.
• Actor’s Nightmare – In all fairness, this one requires three people, so we get an audience volunteer. Two actors can only say lines from a play (we also use dialogue from books; romance novels are hysterical!) while the third improviser drives the scene and must justify the other actors’ lines.
• Hesitation – Similar to Whose Line, but without the setup time. During a scene we will pause in the middle of a line and lean toward the audience, twirling our hand in an “I don’t know what comes next” kind of way. The audience will then yell out a word, and we will repeat it, continuing the scene from there.
• Blind Date – We pick two people randomly from the audience, ask them each for three words that describe themselves, then we act out what it would be like if they went on a blind date. Especially fun for their friends to watch!

Take a look at games that are traditionally played with several people and see if you can adapt it for two…that’s what we did with many of the games we perform in shows. Also, keep in mind that there are many games that can be played with audience members rounding out your cast!

For more details on these and hundreds of other games, check out The Big Book of Improv Games using the link below.