Make It Up as You Go: Suggested Improv Scenes

1. You’ve come home at 3 o’clock in the morning. You are standing at your front door desperate to go inside because you have to go to the bathroom—badly. When you reach inside your pocket to get your keys, you discover that they are missing.



2. You’re watching a horror movie on television. A very bloody murder scene is taking place. You want to watch because you’re very involved in the movie, but the sight of blood always makes you sick.



3. You’re on a strict diet. You’ve set a goal to lose three pounds this week, and you’ve already lost two. You open the refrigerator and see one last slice of your mother’s homemade cherry cheesecake. You’ve never been able to resist your mother’s cheesecake!



4. You’re standing in front of a movie theater’s box office about to buy a ticket when you discover that you can’t pay the price of admission because you don’t have enough money. The friends you were supposed to meet are already inside. You’d like to ask for the extra money that you need, but no one is around. Everybody is in the theater—and the movie started five minutes ago.



5. You’re a teen just waking up at 10:30 in the morning. Your house is a mess because you threw a wild party last night. When you realize that it’s 10:30, you begin to panic. Your parents will be home from their vacation at about 11:00. If they see that you’ve had a party while they were away, you’re dead!



6. You’re a student whose 10-page research paper is due tomorrow morning. You turn on the switch of your electric typewriter only to discover that it is broken. No other typewriter is in your house, and it’s too late at night to try to borrow one from a friend.



7. You’re in a car stopped at a red light when your engine stalls. You try to restart the car, but the engine just won’t turn over. You’re blocking an intersection, and dozens of angry motorists are behind you waiting for you to move.



8. Your grandmother has prepared a meal for you: her famous Hungarian goulash. The last time you ate this stuff, it made you so sick that you vomited. Your grandmother is in the next room, waiting for you to finish. You love your grandmother and don’t want to hurt her feelings, but you fear a reaction similar to your previous experience with her goulash.



9. You’re in your office working on a report that you’ve promised you would have ready for your boss by the end of the working day. It’s close to quitting time, and you’re far from finishing. You’ve already given him an excuse why you couldn’t have the report completed last week, and you fear that if you don’t hand him the report within the next hour, you will be fired.



10. You’ve just hung up the phone after speaking with your daughter. She called to ask you to be careful not to dispose of the contents of a cup that’s on your kitchen counter because her engagement ring is inside the cup soaking in some jewelry cleaning solution. You look on the counter and discover that the cup is not there! You’ve already washed it out, but you don’t recall seeing a ring inside the cup. You fear you may have dumped it down the drain.



11. You’re a vice president of a large company. You just hung up the phone after speaking with the company president, who has directed you to fire one of your employees. What he doesn’t know is that this employee is your best friend—a friend who helped you get the position that you now hold! You hear someone knocking on your office door. When you look through the window, you see that it’s your friend.



12. Yesterday you met someone to whom you were very much attracted in an art gallery. To make a good impression on this person, you told her (or him) that you were an accomplished artist yourself, even though you have never painted one brush stroke in your life. You’ve just hung up your phone after speaking with this person. She (or he) will be at your apartment in ten minutes to look at your paintings.



13. You’re in your bedroom trying to get some sleep, but it is uncomfortably warm, and your air conditioner is broken. You don’t even own a fan.



14. You’re a student sitting at a table in your school’s cafeteria doing some homework, a composition for your English class. It’s a very important assignment that your teacher will collect in class next period, which begins in five minutes. Just as you finish the paper, you pick up a glass of soda to take a sip, but you accidentally spill the soda all over the paper, making it completely unreadable.



15. You’re in the woods hiking when you realize that you are completely lost. If you don’t return to your campsite within the next few minutes, the rest of your party will be very concerned. Before you left, you were bragging about what a great woodsman you are.



16. You hurt your ankle last night, but you didn’t realize just how badly you hurt it until you woke up in pain this morning. Your ankle is swollen, and you can hardly walk. You have to report to your job as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service in an hour. The job, of course, requires lots of walking. You’ve already taken all of your sick leave days this year, and you fear that if you don’t show up for work today, you will be fired.



17. You’re placing a letter in a mailbox. As you drop it in, the clasp of your watch suddenly becomes unhooked, and your watch falls into the mailbox. The watch was given to you by your dearly departed grandfather; to you, it is priceless. You know that it’s a federal offense to tamper with a U.S. Postal Service mailbox, but you must get that watch!



18. You’re in an open area of a park trying to fly a kite, but the wind has died down. Your brother will be meeting you shortly with his 5-year-old son, and you promised the child that you’d have the kite flying high by the time he arrives.



19. In ten minutes your dinner guests will arrive. Everything appears to be ready, but when you open the oven door to take out the roast, you see that it is completely raw. You forgot to turn on the oven!



20. Your date will be picking you up at any moment, and you’re running a bit late. Your hair is soaking wet because you’ve just washed it. You turn on your hair dryer and nothing happens: It’s broken.