Questions Only
OVERVIEW
Questions Only is an easy to explain, but difficult to play improv game. While the task of carrying on a conversation while only using questions may seem easy enough, most players find it challenging. It often appears in workshops with a focus on:
Agility
Creativity
Embracing Mistakes
Listening
Sales
Staying In The Moment
REQUIREMENTS
Number of Participants:
Minimum: 2 participants / Maximum: 16 participants
Time Required:
Minimum: 10 minutes / Maximum: 20 minutes
Materials Needed:
None
EXERCISE INSTRUCTIONS
This game is played in pairs. You may run it by having the class play it simultaneously or by having each pair perform it for the rest of the class as if they were an audience.
If you decide to run it all together simultaneously, it is a good idea to have one or two pairs perform it as a demonstration for everyone first. That way you can note the demonstration scenes for common pitfalls, making the following exercises more beneficial.
Questions only is one of the simplest improv games to explain. All players have to do is carry on a fictional conversation using only questions, no statements allowed.
While it is easy to explain, it can be very hard for participants who will feel compelled to answer questions asked of them. This scene from the famous Tom Stoppard play, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, demonstrates the game in action.
If your players get good at phrasing all their lines as questions, you can make the game more difficult by adding the same restrictions to it that Tom Stoppard does:
1) No hesitations or pregnant pauses. When it is your turn to speak, you must speak in the form of a question.
2) No repetition of the same question in the same scene.
3) No non sequiturs - your questions must relate to what came before.
4) No rhetoric - no asking questions about the nature of existence unless the scene builds to it organically. If one player asks, "Would you hand me the butter?" then the response, "Would you like it now?" makes sense and would be correct. But responding with, "What is the meaning of life?" while a question, seems to come out of nowhere and would be considered to be technically against the rules of the game.
With larger groups you can run the game as a team competition forming two layup lines from upstage to downstage, one onstage left and the other on stage right. The two most downstage players start. Each time a player fails to ask a question in accordance with the rules they are out and replaced by the next player on their team's layup line. Once a team has had every player in their line join the scene and make a mistake, the other team is declared the winner!
INSTRUCTOR DISCUSSION POINTS / LEARNING TAKEAWAYS
AGILITY
This is an easy exercise top work on agility with. Be sure to to focus all players on the game before getting started and ask them to play to win. Every opnce in awhile, when a player makes a mistake, deconstruct how and why it happened. Mistakes in this game often come from a lack focus or from failing to stay in the moment.
EMBRACING MISTAKES
Questions Only leads to a lot of mistakes being made and is therefore a good exercise to use when working on embracing mistakes. Try playing this game with the layiup line variation but add this twist: Every time a player is ruled as having made a mistake have them shout in celebration, "I made a mistake! I was wrong!" while the rest of class cheers and applauds for them.
Celebrating failure helps us overcome our fear of trying. If you are too scared to really try to succeed at Questions Only (meaning you can also really fail at it) what are the chances you will have the bravery to try to succeed when something really important comes along?
SALES
Sales professionals are often trained to ask clients more questions than make statements. Statements can be dxisagreed with or rejected while questions help you understand your clients better. Playing this games helps to underline for sales professionals how hard it is to focus on questions instead of statements, both for themselves and for their clients.
Sales professionals are also trained to never ask Yes or No questions or simple questions. This is because such questions allow a client to easily answer no to questions like, "Do you see the value in our product?" Instead, sales professionals are encouraged to ask open ended quewstions that will allow them to gather crucial information about their client or at least allow for the conversation to continue instead of abruptly ending.