![]() Often, the basic language and technique has much in common with an expert persona with their love of specificity, jargon, and historicity (whether or not any of it is even remotely truthful!) If you’re playing with this device for the first time, such an expert approach serves well, but also look for points of view or character qualities that can maximize comedic juxtapositions and support playful surprises. This character device can provide an overlay for almost any improv scene or serve as an impetus to craft a unique characterization. This can be a hard balance to strike, but if you’re the chatterbox and you find your teammates scrambling to find one new scenic avenue after another, then explore a less overtly blocking tack.ģ.) Find the POV. ![]() Player D could easily shut down the castle game completely with their societal critique, but by also then agreeing to join the activity they are serving the greater goal of the scene. While it’s the chatterbox’s stated function to verbosely comment upon or overly contextualize the topics at hand, strive to also enable continued play and discovery. As is true of any waffling or wimping choice, you’re just a short walk from outright blocking territory. Each chatterbox diatribe serves essentially as a built-in stalling device with their innate function as an unbridled and expansive musing. Not every response needs to be a paragraph even if it is frequently so.Ģ.) Avoid blocking. Players should strive to pitch focus and fun launches to the chatterbox who should return the favor by not completely driving the scene without a sense of their scene partners’ needs too. Once the chatterbox has been established, concentrate on the scenic give and take. Such an introduction provides the scenic norm that the chatterbox can then disrupt and overturn. It’s a helpful strategy to have this character enter the scene a little later for this reason as this gives the other players some stage time to establish the CROW and their own character deals. The chatterbox, by design, tends to vocally dominate the scene especially if the tool isn’t used sparingly. A lot of the appeal of this game is experiencing in real time what rambling content the uninterrupted stream of consciousness ultimately creates.ġ.) Leave room. Similarly, doggedly challenging the overtalker’s facts or content tends to ground their flights of fancy rather than empowering them to reach for new levels of ludicrousness. Player B: “I’ll send down my long hair, like Rapunzel…”īe cautious of coding the chatterbox as crazy or unpleasantly inappropriate as such a move will usually shut down instead of heightening the game. Player A: “Will you help me rescue the king’s prisoner?” Much like the modern education system that we find ourselves unwittingly engaging in currently…” Player D: “Ah yes, the moat – that medieval castle fortification system that trapped its occupants as much as protected them. Player A: “I’m outside the castle, by the moat.” Player B: (handing D a suitably horsey stick) “Here you go…” I am familiar with this general oeuvre, and the harm such narratives have imposed upon generations of the world’s youth, suggesting that we have no agency ourselves but must wait, instead, for a theoretical prince to save us from the very system he represents and from which he gains his power… I would like to be the horsey please.” I wasn’t aware that this sandbox was really a portal in time sliding us all back into tired gender tropes and stereotypes. Player A: “It’s my turn to be the prince…” Player B: “Have you played castles before?” Player C: (warmly, as they leave) “Thank you, children. Player C: “Can Emily join you both in the sandbox? She’s new.” Player B: “Don’t get caught! The king is a meanie…”Ī teacher, Player C, enters with a new addition to the daycare center, Player D (the predetermined chatterbox.) Player A: “I will rescue you from your castle prison!” Their imaginative game is well underway as we join the action, each with an improvised stick in their hand to serve as their fictional character… Two young children, Player A and B, begin the scene in a daycare sandbox. ![]() While other characters engage in “normal” dialogue and action, the chatterbox’s speech acts are deliberately, inappropriately (and generally, comedically) voluminous. One player volunteers to play the “chatterbox” for the scene. Chatterbox, on the other hand, provides a rare exception where carefully embracing your verbosity actually aids the scene. If you’re working on taming this particular improv inner demon, consider exploring games such as Sentences and Speaking in Turn that actively restrict verbal offers. I briefly mention this character-based game in my earlier Commandment #6 entry on Waffling here which also looks at ways to restrain vocal effusiveness. ![]()
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