Genres is one of those games that is deceptively difficult because of how easy it is to explain. It’s not one of my best, simply because it allows for a lot of openness and there aren’t really any constraints. Despite that, it can be a lot of fun as long as the improvisers know the fundamentals of how it should be played.

This game is a scene game for a small team, so three or four works. It’s energy levels varied based on the suggestions, but often it can be on the higher end since it can get a little ridiculous. This is how the game is played. You get a suggestion of anything (I like ‘well known fairy tale or story plot’ for this one in particular), and then the improvisers build a scene based on that suggestion. Then, throughout the game, the ref calls ‘Freeze!’ and asks the audience for a new thematic suggestion. Often ‘genre’ works really well (it’s what the game is named, after all), but other suggestions can work, too. As soon as a new suggestion is picked, the actors continue their scene adopting the elements of that genre into their story. If Little Red Riding Hood suddenly becomes a western, the actors playing those iconic characters might start speaking in accents and pull out revolvers. Maybe people jump on horses and begin a chase scene. The key thing to remember here is that the original suggestion: the plot of the scene, should remain consistent. You’re still telling the story of Little Red Riding Hood, only the medium through which it is being told changes roughly every forty seconds.

If you’re familiar with the game, this is very similar to Eggs. The biggest difference is that instead of performing a given scene multiple different ways, you’re performing one scene that is constantly in flux. You aren’t just adapting to the suggestion, you’re applying that suggestion to the thing you’ve already made as you make it. In some ways it’s easier, because you’re not constrained by predefined actions or lines. But as I always say, creativity isn’t empowered by the lack of constraints, it’s hindered by it.

The fact that the character and the story is always concrete is probably the hardest part for my troupe in particular. It’s hard to move the scene and use the same characters when creating new ones is so much easier. It’s difficult to follow a plot structure in so many minutes while also hitting the key elements of whatever genre you’re fulfilling, and it’s for that reason that I don’t teach this game to beginning improvisers. (Start with Eggs. It’s the same idea, but it’s much easier, especially if your actors don’t have a firm grip on how to establish a scene with CROW.)

In order to really nail this game, it should also complete the story arc of whatever original suggestion you were given. It doesn’t need to end the same way as Little Red Riding Hood does, or any other story for that matter. In fact, I would argue that it shouldn’t, because humor often derives from subverting the conventional norms. This does mean that you have to tell this story in three to five minutes, which is why fairy tales and nursery rhymes work better than “Lord of the Rings“, but either way, it has the best ending when it has a natural conclusion, as opposed to the typical conclusion of improv scene games where you end it by referencing something that happened in the beginning.