This is a fun and easy improv-style warmup that works with up to 10 people, and takes 5 minutes or up to 5 hours... depending on how much fun you’re having!

How to do it

This activity is based on a hypothetical conversation between a superhero character and a sidekick character. The first person in your group starts as a sidekick, and brings a problem for the second person – the superhero – to solve, starting with “Oh no!...”. For example: “Oh no! The library is on fire!”

The superhero answers with a proposed solution, e.g. “I know exactly what we have to do! We will bring water from the river and put out the fire!”.

The third person plays the ”˜sidekick’, and continues the chain by bringing a new problem caused by that solution, to the next person in the circle, e.g. “Oh no! Now all the books got wet!”. The next person plays the superhero, and comes up with a solution to the new problem, e.g. “We will collect all the hairdryers in town and dry the books one by one!”.

Keep passing from person to person, alternating from sidekick to superhero, until everybody has had a go. You can be as silly as you like with this warmup; it doesn’t have to make sense, or relate to the topic of your meeting. It should, however, help your group to be a bit more creative, and think on their feet a little more.

Variations

Speaking of being on your feet, this warmup is much better if everybody stands up in a circle. If you are meeting online, make sure everybody has their video cameras on (if possible), and let your group know to pass to whoever they want to, by calling them by name.

They can even use “superhero/sidekick names” if they want to, e.g. Kevin could be Kaptain Kevin!

Source: Collected by Ákos Csertán

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