Eggs is usually the first team game I teach to any group of aspiring actors. It’s a very simple hoop game that only involves acting how you are told, and thus is extremely easy. The more experienced the cast is with this game, however, the more you can do with it.

So, as I said this is a team game. Unlike others it requires exactly four people (unless you have the ref fill the “director” role, which I will get into). It’s a hoop game because every improviser has a very specific role in the game, and all they do is modify their role depending on what they are asked.

Another reason this is the first game I teach to people is because it has an established scene. Scripted? Only sort of, because it requires the audience to know the scene to be able to get the joke. The scene goes as follows, describing each role as a proper noun to make it easier to understand who is who.

<Egg Maker starts center stage, whisking some eggs in a bowl (pantomime, obviously). Dead Person walks on from stage right.>

Dead Person: What are you doing?

Egg Maker: Making eggs.

DP: Can I have some?

EM: Sure, but they’re not ready yet.

DP: I don’t care. <Takes the bowl and drinks from it. Promptly falls to the floor, apparently dead.>

<EM runs slightly stage left, grabs a pantomime phone.>

EM: Doctor, doctor! Come quick!

<Doctor walks on from upstage left.>

Doctor: What seems to be the problem?

<EM points to the Dead Person. Doctor walks over and checks pulse.>

Doctor: He/She’s dead.

When you’re playing Eggs, this scene must be performed to “set the stage”, if you will. These lines and actions must be performed verbatim in order for the scene to do well. Once this scene is performed, the Director (which can be the ref or another improviser) calls “Cut!” The Director does not have preset lines. You can give the Director any personality you choose: Anything from Gordon Ramsey to kindly grandmother. They can say anything they want (I usually go with something along the lines of “That was the most awful thing I’ve ever witnessed. You’re lucky I’m desperate.”) Whatever they say leads into having the Director have them perform the scene again, only “This time as painters, teachers, clowns, etc.” (The Director can come up with these suggestions on their own, and they can be anything from objects, to emotions, to occupations, to genres, but it looks scripted if you don’t get these suggestions from the audience.)

When the actors perform the scenes, they must change their original actors to make sense with their new suggestions. The Egg Maker can now be painting something instead of making eggs, or making a lesson plan, or juggling. Here’s the key, though. Whatever the suggestion, you must make it different from the original scene.

For this scene, I usually grab very specific suggestions in order. This is because as the scene progresses, I want the improvisers to make the scene more and more different, while making sure the whole audience understands what is going on. In a typical game, four different scenes will be played. The first change shouldn’t manipulate any of the dialogue, but the third change can be a very different scene. The suggestions I grab (in order) to help make this happen the way I want is emotion, genre, and occupation. Performing depressed can make the scene the same but different, but making everybody painters will change the entire story progression.

As improvisers get more experienced, they should be able to take similar suggestions and perform differently to accommodate how late into the game they are. Performing with the suggestion “Depressed” when it’s the first scene change should look very different when it’s the last scene change. This goes for any suggestion, and grabbing the suggestions in a specific order will inhibit the actors’ ability to learn how to do that, but it’s useful for instructional purposes.

There are different versions of this game, as well. Bus Stop is the same game only with a longer static scene, and Movie Director is the same only with no static scene. Typically I teach this one because it’s easier to teach and learn than the other two. It’s fun, it’s easy, but most importantly: it’s simple.