Synonyms
Story Story Die. Die Game.
Introduction
Let’s get four or five performers in a line for a story competition.
Description
The line of players are tasked with telling a story together. The leader will pick one player to start the story. As long as they are being pointed at (conducted) the player will continue to tell the story. Without warning the leader will switch to another player and that player will seamlessly pick up the story.
The goal of the handle is to have the players seamlessly continue to tell a story. If the conductor moves from one player to another mid sentence the player will pick up mid sentence. If the conductor moves from player to player mid word the player will pick up mid word. If it is working the handle will sound like one person telling a story.
For example, player Eh could be mid-word, “many children were afraid of Carl for he was known to ha-” Player Bee, would pick up the story mid-word “-ve piles of library books that were overdue.” This should sound like “many children were afraid of Carl for he was known to ha-ve many piles of library books that were overdue.”
The leader can add complications to the structure by endowing the story with emotions, genres or occupations. Conducted Story is a narrative handle and should follow STEPS.
Audience Instruction and Cautions
In the competitive version of Conducted Story the audience is instructed to make noise whenever a player slips up, pauses, or breaks the narrative. The audience can collectively yell “die” or make the “fail buzzer” noise. The fail buzzer noise is usually accompanied by the audience crossing their arms in dismay.
Competitive games that involve the audience are not without risk. Often the audience will side with the players and not want anyone to “lose.” A boisterous audience will often yell die or fail buzzer a scene they don’t like later.
Gimmicks
- Leave the conduction on one player for a long time.
- Quickly move from player to player
Variations
- Gibberish – Seamless gibberish is a real thing.
- Back Story – Conductor is behind the players touching their backs without warning.
- Conducted Story – None competitive version of above
- Word At A Time – each player contributes only one word at a time.
Credits
None