The RULES:
In this two-person improv game, select one player as “The Chosen One,” or CO, for short! The other player grabs and reveals either a purple card or an orange card. 🟠🟣
The player with the card confronts the CO with a rumor based on one of the words on the card. The player can make up wild and juicy stories!
The CO can either 1) confess and explain themselves or 2) deny the rumor and blame someone else.
Now here’s the twist:
The player with the card then confronts the CO with yet another rumor! This rumor is based on the second word on the card.
If the CO denied the first rumor, they have to accept this rumor and explain themselves. Alternately, if they accepted the first rumor, they have to deny the second!
Here’s a video example of how that game works, along with an Applied Improv debrief.
Laura Bergells
I’m going to pick up a card for Izzy. And, okay! Okay, wizard and villain. So I’m going to confront you on that.
Izzy, you come up with solutions out of the blue in these meetings that no one else comes out with. It’s like magic. It’s like, people are saying you’re a wizard, and you keep doing that repeatedly, over and over whenever we have a problem. It is just some ingeniously brilliant solution.
Izzy G
You know, I’ll admit to you, Laura. People think those are my ideas, and I’ve been promulgating them for a while now. It’s chat GPT that I’ve been spending time with and talking about the solutions. And when somebody heard I didn’t do it consciously, but somebody said to me, “Hey, that’s a great idea. Let me take you to lunch.”
And I didn’t say no, I said, “Okay, well, one lunch.” Which then somebody else came up, and they really was impactful with that idea. And I fell into that hole. It’s sort of like, when you when you meet somebody and you don’t know their name, and you get to see them 1015 times, there comes a point where you just can’t tell the truth anymore.
Laura Bergells
Say, it isn’t so, Izzy! You’re not the wizard we thought we were! You’re actually a villain!
Izzy G
Well, I yeah, I I’ve had to live this life of a wizard, and I’m causing some really discomfort among people. I’m not open, I’m not honest. And I’m taking credit for things I haven’t done. And other people are telling me that they want me to work with them. And I’m taking credit for that, too. And I have become a destructive force in this organization.
Laura Bergells
Let me tell you why. Villains like us should hang together. Don’t you agree?
Izzy G
Whoa. I think, I think it’ll certainly make my jealousy less, less powerful. Yeah, let’s, let’s do that. And let’s, let’s see what Chet GPT says about our next move.
Laura Bergells
Come join my secret villain’s lair together. (laughter)
DEBRIEF
Laura Bergells
How did it feel to as an improviser? First, you were Yes, ending and that or Yes, no-ing or Yes, but-ing. And then yes, ANDing to what you were being offered.
Izzy G
There’s a certain flow that you get into when you’re telling the story. Because it just it keeps building and anything you say, can lead to something else. When the villain came up in the Yes, but had had to happen, or the consequence, I could feel my creativity, slow and almost pause. It’s almost like in any creative act, there’s a flow of of creativity. And then you get to a point where either you’re stopped, you’re stuck, or you step away, and then come back with different perspective. So I was able to notice that there was a shift in perspective, and how the story got got told.
Laura Bergells
I thought it was really interesting that you chose first to say, No, I’m not a wizard at all. So you started out with the Yes, but and I know that that isn’t your character your go to at all? Did you hit it first like that? Just to see what that would be like?
Izzy G
Well the choice I had to make quickly was, according to the rules, well, one of them is, I have to deny the rumor. And explain how the rumor got started. And the other one I have to accept. So once I made the choice to deny, then it was almost like a yes. And to the rumor rather than to the roll.
Laura Bergells
I wonder how that would have flowed if we now play it and you have to accept wizard and deny villain, and how might that change the story? So I tell you that let’s just play that real out really quickly.
Izzy G
Okay. How
Laura Bergells
is he? Everybody’s saying you’re coming into these meetings, and you’re coming up with stuff like magic and you get involved in all these different product projects, because you’re just a wizard. You just keep coming up with these great ideas out of thin air. How do you do that? I mean, is this even true? Well,
Izzy G
I’m not technically a wizard. It is true that people could see me like that. And I actually feel it feel pretty proud of that. Because it’s sort of like an alchemy where I’m putting different things together and my My grandson told me that, you know, when I started playing with this little five year old kid, I began to see that there was no obstacles to possibilities. And I began, I think I began to take that. And and if you think about what a child is a child is a wizard in terms of making stuff up, and then trying to do something else and creating some magic out of something. I mean, even noses disappear for kids. So I just I think I just embodied this, this beginner six year old mind. And I am, I guess I get credit for it. Because most of the other people who are stuck in linear old fashioned thinking,
Laura Bergells
I’m a little concerned with with that, because the other rumor that’s coming up is you’re getting a really big head about your magical abilities to come up with things, you’re kind of putting other people down. And it’s kind of giving you a power trip that’s turning you into something of a villain and people aren’t really liking what you’re what you’re off for right now.
Izzy G
I think it’s not about me, it’s about them. That, you know, success, people are jealous. I’m called the villain, because I make people feel bad. But I don’t make anybody feel bad people have their own choices with their own behaviors. So I I’m, I think it just got started because of the the the jealousy and the competitiveness in this organization. And I wouldn’t call myself a villain. But other people might, and that’s up to them.
Laura Bergells
Well, that makes sense. I wonder if you can use your magic powers is a wizard to work with people on making them see you as less of a villain.
Izzy G
Oh, interesting. So if I had wanted to do that, I guess I could go back to what I said was the wizard was play. And maybe we can have some more activities, play times, adult play times in in, in the company, and then when we play together, people will see I’m really not that much of a villain and that their assessment is is not an accurate one.
Laura Bergells
Excellent plan. Now, how did it feel to flip roles like that the story went completely differently, depending on how you accepted and how you denied? Yeah.
Izzy G
In both in both cases, it was the switch. That was the the challenge the switch in terms of remembering which character Am I the the expert, the acceptor or the or the denier? The switch in the flow that one story is going along? And then you have to Yes, but the everybody sees me as the villain. So far, yeah, yeah, I can be a wizard. And here’s the launcher wizard. Yes. But everybody sees you as a willing Wait, no, I’m not a Miller. There’s literally a I would think that there’s a somatic body difference in in what happens with between the two, the two systems. So that’s interesting to me, is how to,
Unknown Speaker
yes, and
Izzy G
even the switch. So how do I doing that? Again, there was a pause. But I think what I’m saying is that, once you commit to a storyline, that you follow it until you change, and then you follow that. And it may take a little while to get into that correlated status, a second story. But the idea is just keep building, you know, and not think too, too much about does this fit? Is this right? Am I miss enough? Just just you and I really appreciate it. It was helpful also, is your questions you’re coming in. In both times, I thought that that being the villain with me in the first SEC segment was really helpful. And the way you presented the the questions here was really helpful to keep me on track. And I was pleased to be able to bring the first part instead of the ending.
Laura Bergells
Right, because it makes it holistic, I guess what, what struck me too, is something bigger in life that sometimes when we commit to a storyline, if somebody confronts us about something, and our first instinct is we’re going to deny that instead of accept it, then we have to double down because it’s our ego and that’s involved and says, Oh, you know, we just said no to this now we have to close down and not listen to other perspectives. Yeah. And it’s, it’s just to me that’s really fascinating to have that kind of insight now. knowledge about how maybe it’s better to yes and something when somebody says something, or to see how they got that perspective in the first place.
Izzy G
What you are saying sparks in me this the word curiosity. Yes. And is an opener of curiosity. So even if it’s something that you don’t believe in the fact that the rumor so that this may be one of the benefits of the rumor game, the rumor exists, whether it’s true or not, is is a choice. So the curiosity is, where does that come from? And that’s where the imagination comes in. It comes in, right? So, if the rumor is I’m this, then I’ll say oh, okay, I am that and where does it come from? Where I’m not that and here’s the curiosities, how did that evolve? But this is a real for me, a little eye opener into a spark for curiosity.