Reflection on workshop experiment

The mini workshop that I had designed was on the Harold, a long form improvisation game. In a group of five, we tested it out. First I talked about the Harold, and then we tried out some of the techniques. The group was given a word, and then they had to create three scenes based on the word. The word chosen was pencil in this case. This proved hard, as you had to think on the spot, forming a whole scene over a mundane object, a pencil. The scenes did not turn out to be very focused, and didn’t advance anywhere. The idea was that three different scenes are done based on the word. The first one was fine, about a pencil factory, but it too got a little out of hand. Then the group had to come up with another idea for a scene with the word pencil. This did not progress much further than the platform. The third scene got even more weird and unfocused. The feedback I got was that my group felt that it was quite challenging. I feel that it is important to get people to be serious about, as it does require some dedication and effort. If the scenes can be made to flow smoothly and to advance further, than it could work. Perhaps it would be good to try out assigning topics related to the word for each scene, at least until people get more comfortable with the technique.